Reset
by scotchplaid
Summary: B&W AUish. Set ten years after the end of Season Five. The Warehouse/world is in peril (yet again), and a reluctant H.G., who walked away ten years ago, is called upon to help save it and, in the process, perhaps save herself as well.
1. Chapter 1

**A/N: Another S5 fix-it, but there's no artefacting of Pyka. I tried to take it seriously. There's B&W at the end, of course, but it'll take a while to get there. Because I have another ongoing story, updates will likely be slower for this one. But, for better or worse, my chapters tend to be long, so maybe that'll make up for it. In addition to the usual disclaimers re: not owning WH13 or its characters, etc., etc., I'll add the disclaimer that I'm not going to be precise about show plotlines, timelines, or anything else. I'll be fudging a lot.**

She was both appalled and amused that this was the invitation she was accepting. Artie would simply be appalled; the invitation hadn't come from him. The invitations came from Claudia as everything else did - the announcements, the photos, the gossipy little items. Helena had never responded to any of them before; almost ten years' worth of news of the Warehouse and its agents and she had never sent so much as a thank you in response. Someone else might have taken her silence as disinterest, but not Claudia. The last time Helena had spoken with an agent was a brief phone call she had with Myka, after Nate and Giselle but before Patrick and Catherine and all the rest. Myka was in an airport waiting for a flight, so she had said. She had laughed nervously and apologized for calling so late - it was midnight in London - but she had wanted Helena to hear it from her first. Helena had said the right things, the things a friend should say, ending the call by wishing her and Pete all the best. That was the one invitation she hadn't received; Myka hadn't sent her one, and Claudia would have known better than to try to correct what was, only on the surface, an oversight. But Helena had received the announcement less than two years later of Andrew Bering Lattimer's arrival in the world, and Claudia hadn't stinted on sending pictures. A doting godmother, she found every act of young Drew Lattimer worthy of saving for posterity, although just possibly, because it was Claudia, she took impish glee in imagining Helena's sigh every time she received an e-mail with a new photo. Her text message about the divorce, when it occurred, had been so terse that Helena couldn't help but imagine Claudia transmitting it via Western Union, seeing a freeze frame of the rumpled yellow telegram - Pyka over. Stop.

She hadn't responded to it either.

But this, this, Artie's retirement was enough to have her lean forward in her chair and send back her electronic RSVP. Then, in another first, she sent a message of her own: I look forward to seeing all of you.

###############

It was called the "campus" now, the entirely artificial greenspace on which the B&B had been built, dry prairie on the edge of the Badlands that had been sodded, irrigated, and manicured to resemble nothing remotely approaching its original form. Acres similarly cosmeticized had been added to encompass the growth in housing. The two-story Victorian B&B still stood, albeit significantly enlarged by additions on both the main and second floors, but single family homes also shared the property, shaded walks and a few lanes just big enough for a golf cart or a hybrid-energy compact connecting them. It was all so self-consciously designed to balance privacy and a sense of community, middle-class comfort and the desire to reduce one's carbon footprint that Helena smiled and shook her head. Surely there had to be a fitness center and a community garden to complete the picture.

In the middle of the campus, there was a large white tent, the kind usually reserved for graduation parties and family reunions, and although the invitation had said only that the reception was to be held from 2 to 4 on the campus, and not where, the number of people milling around the outside of the tent suggested the reception was being held there. The dress code appeared to be khakis and polo shirts for the men and sundresses of varying colors and lengths for the women. Feeling a little overdressed in her tailored slacks and silk blouse, she walked across the grass toward the tent. She didn't recognize any of the men and women standing outside the tent drinking from paper cups and eating appetizers from paper plates (it was hard to miss the containers at the corners with the recycling symbol). But the man emerging from under the canopy, avidly attacking a kebab and crinkling his eyes against the sun as he looked at her was all too familiar. His mouth stretching wide in a welcoming grin, he flung down his plate and jogged to intercept her, waving his arm in a come-along gesture at a small boy engaged in a slouching, scuffling patrol of the tent, boredom plain on his face.

"H.G.!" Pete yelled in her ear as he wrapped her in a bear hug and lifted her off the ground. He gave her another squeeze before releasing her and stepping back to take her in. "Claud said you were coming, but we didn't believe it. God, you look great. Love the white streak, by the way." He raised a hand as if to touch her hair but thought better of it. "Very Lily Munster."

Ten years ago she wouldn't have caught the reference, but she had spent too many nights in too many hotel rooms flipping channels to counteract her insomnia not to have at least a passing acquaintance with American sitcoms. "As I believe you and Herman are brothers under the skin."

"Ouch, I don't think that's a compliment," he said to the boy who had come to stand beside him, ill at ease and clearly dreading the incipient introduction. With a gentle shove, Pete propelled the boy forward. "This is Drew." The boy started to sketch a wave, but Helena reached out and pulled his hand into a handshake. One second, two, then Drew dropped the contact and let his eyes fly away. "Drew, this is the lady who wrote all those stories your mom read you."

She had recognized him, even before Pete had motioned to the boy to join him. She had opened every one of the pictures Claudia had sent her, the baby in the bathtub shots, in which he mimicked in miniature his father's squinting grimace; the birthday pictures, in which he raised a face full of frosting toward the camera; and the ones Helena had sourly called to herself the "God, doesn't he look like Myka?" pictures, which Claudia must have especially enjoyed sending. But none of them - and she fervently believed that Claudia had not let a moment of his eight years escape without being digitally recorded - had prepared her for meeting Myka's son. Pete and Myka's son, she reminded herself. Because he did look like Pete more than he did his mother. His coloring was different, the hair a lighter brown and the eyes hazel instead of dark brown, but the shape of his face, his nose, his mouth - they were Pete's. Drew's smile, not in evidence today, but in the pictures, at times goofy, at times cocky, sometimes both at once, but always engaging, that was Pete's too.

Myka was more in his expressions, not the sulky shyness besetting him now, but in the lip-biting concentration Claudia had captured as he constructed a Lego racer and the pensiveness with which he viewed a department store Santa besieged by other children. She was in his gait as he had joined his father; even with hunched shoulders and a foot-dragging reluctance to meet yet another adult, he walked with an easy grace that was hers, and which, with the characteristic seriousness that frequently mistook a compliment for an observation needing explanation, she had attributed to her years of fencing. And then, as the shyness that had gripped Drew seemed to give way to curiosity, she was in the directness with which he met Helena's eyes, an open, inquiring look that, when his mother turned it on her, had always left Helena feeling not so much exposed as called upon to respond, as if Myka were asking a question only she could answer.

"Hmmm?" She was dimly aware that Pete was saying. . . something.

"The rest of the crew's in the tent, well, most of them, anyway, and they're anxious to see you."

"Ah, yes. I'm sure Arthur's celebration won't be complete without my congratulations," she said dryly.

Drew led the way, happier, at least, to be moving, the reddish tint to the waves of his hair more pronounced in the sunlight, and Helena blinked, remembering how Myka's hair could shine with a profusion of colors - red, orange, gold - so different from the unrelieved blackness of her own. Not so unrelieved any longer. She cast a sideways glance at Pete; he was graying as well, but he looked fit, he could easily button the blazer he was wearing over his stomach. If Myka was, what, forty-three, Pete would be approaching fifty.

Pete must have been conducting a similar evaluation of her, because he said with a teasing but appreciative smile, "You don't look a day over 140. Still doing the, um, kenpo?"

"It's all rounding after you reach 100," Helena said. "More tai chi than kenpo these days."

"Myka's dying to see you. She's around somewhere. I think one of the newbies dragged her off for a consultation."

Helena very much doubted that Myka was 'dying' to see her, but there was nothing in Pete's voice or expression that suggested he was being anything less than sincere. Yet Myka had typically kept her feelings close, and Helena didn't think seven years of marriage and whatever type of relationship she and Pete now had would have changed that. Especially where she was concerned. "It'll be good to see her," Helena said, feeling that the words had come out awkwardly, stiffly.

But Pete didn't seem to notice, coming to a stop just inside the tent and saying, "Guess who I've got with me."

Helena had taken no more than a step forward when she was enveloped by a blur of arms and legs in a rib-cracking hug. "Ten years," Claudia said quietly but fiercely. "Ten years it took me, but you're finally here." She stood back, crying unashamedly, and though Helena had promised herself that she wouldn't cry no matter who she saw or what someone said, and, truthfully, had not once felt close to crying since she had arrived, she felt the burn of tears now. Claudia shimmered in front of her, wearing a rumpled linen pantsuit that seemed more Mrs. Frederic or a corporate executive attending Artie's retirement party than Claudia. "I know," she said, pointing to herself. "You'd think I was COO of Facebook or Yahoo or something." She pulled Helena into another hug. "You felt it, didn't you? The Warehouse." She whispered, intending to be heard only by Helena. "It's glad you're back, too."

When Helena had first been an agent, when the 20th century, little more than a decade away, seemed to herald all the promise that had eluded the century she had been born in, and the 21st was nearly mystical with portent, she thought that everyone associated with the Warehouse felt what she did, its. . . hum, a deep, constant reverberation that sounded as much like a cat's purr as it did the ceaseless revolving of an engine. However, she learned that the sounds - and the smells - of the Warehouse were present only to a few, and had things turned out differently, she could have been then what Claudia was now, its caretaker. Given how poorly she had managed to look after her daughter, in the end, it was just as well that the Warehouse's welfare hadn't been left in her hands. But the connection had never really been broken, not when she had been immured in bronze or marshalling artefacts to end the world or, much more prosaically, burying herself in Boone or London or on Capri, and she had felt it today, even before she had arrived at the campus. She had felt it in Univille as soon as her foot touched the hotel's parking lot, that thrum, which had become only the more insistent the closer she came to the Warehouse.

But she couldn't acknowledge it to Claudia, how her heart seemed to beat in rhythm with the vibrations, saying only, "You need to get out more, darling."

Claudia seemed to recognize the remark for the deflection it was, shrugging, willing to let it go for the moment. "Have you seen Myka yet?"

Pete answered for her from the buffet, piling a plate high with kebabs and puffs. "I think she's with one of the newbies."

Claudia frowned. "She was supposed to be squiring around Congressman Jaffee. Giving him the rundown on artefact retrieval and storage."

Helena quirked an eyebrow. "Since when are members of Congress introduced to the Warehouse?"

"Since Congress decided that, like any government agency, we're subject to their oversight." Claudia raised her own eyebrows. "A lot's changed since you've been gone." Leading Helena toward the center of the tent, she said over her shoulder, "By the way, your white streak, very -"

"Lily Munster, yes, I've been told."

"I was going to say Susan Sontag. I'm not Pete, you know." Claudia grinned.

Standing next to the support pole for the top of the tent were Artie and Vanessa. They were shaking hands with and talking to a group of well-wishers. Helena couldn't remember whether they had married in the intervening years. She supposed it didn't matter; although Vanessa had only ever managed to blunt the edges of his temper and even out his fits of moroseness, she was also the only one who had been able to do that much. The wiry hair had turned white, but his voice was still caustic. Seeing Helena, he announced, "The prodigal has returned. Kill the fatted calf! Sorry, Pete's already eaten it." Pete, hearing Artie's shout, shrugged and held up a kebab.

For a moment, Helena thought he was wearing a muumuu, but as Artie completed his turn toward her, she realized that it was an oversized Hawaiian shirt that someone must have given him as a gag gift. He poked his glasses up the bridge of his nose and held out his arms, a mocking smile playing at his mouth. Moving into the hug, she noticed that he had cocked his head, trying to view her out of the corners of his eyes. Macular degeneration. One of the reasons for his retirement, Claudia had explained in the e-mail with the invitation. Another one, of course, was standing next to him. Long since retired from the CDC but still on call for the Warehouse staff, Vanessa, Claudia confided, had finally issued an ultimatum. She was moving to her home on Maui, with or without him. Apparently with him, if his shirt was any indication.

He held her more tightly to him than she was anticipating; she was off-balance, practically leaning over him - she wasn't a tall woman by any means but she had forgotten how short Artie was - and only belatedly realized that he was trying to whisper something in her ear. Inclining her head toward his lips, she heard him say, "You came back. Don't tell me this means that I'm finally forgiven."

He had said it with a wryness that was belied by the intensity of his hug. "Forgiven you for what, Arthur?" She murmured, temporizing, though she already knew.

"Forgiven me for resetting the time line, bringing you back from the dead." He drew back and shook his head, his hair wagging to its own beat. "That's all right. Somedays I wish I hadn't either." He took his glasses off and passed his hand over his eyes, but whether it was from emotion or the fatigue of the day, Helena couldn't tell. "She should have been here."

Claudia ducked in between them, slinging her arms around their waists. "Hey, what's with the serious faces?"

"Nothing," Helena said quickly. With a meaningful look at Artie, she added, "Admittedly, we have a checkered history, Arthur, but I have wished, and will always continue to wish, the very best for you."

"That was gnomic and Spock-like and potentially very scary," Claudia said, removing an arm and flashing the Vulcan split-fingered benediction at no one in particular. "Have you just sacrificed your life to save the party from a cosmic catastrophe? Because we've already gone through this once before."

"I'm officially through with trying to save the Warehouse or you," Artie said, pointing a stubby finger at Claudia, "from disaster. But, unofficially, you know, if Myka needs some more mentoring in the job. . . ." He shrugged, turning his head to see if Vanessa had overheard him.

"Myka's our new Artie. Didn't I tell you that?" Claudia frowned, clearly going through in her mind the past several e-mails she had sent to Helena. "But she's cuter and sweeter, and she's got that whole eidetic memory thing going for her." She gave Artie a fond glance. "You'll hardly be missed."

Artie sent Claudia a bilious look in exchange, but ten years hadn't made Helena more patient with their lovingly fractious - but constant - teasing of one another. Vanessa, having disposed of a well wisher with a "You'll have to come see us on Maui," was already reaching for Helena. She and Vanessa lightly hugged, exchanging air kisses. After saying something bland but congratulatory, Helena was almost beyond the circle of people crowding around them, when Vanessa asked, "Have you seen Myka yet?"

Was everyone going to ask her this? "Not yet. I hope to meet up with her later." That was more or less true. Vanessa seemed satisfied with her response, but Artie was watching her, his head still tilted, although Helena wasn't sure whether it owed anything to his impaired vision or was simply an indication that he didn't believe her. She searched for Claudia, wanting some excuse to ease herself away, but Claudia had been pulled aside by a self-important stripling in his twenties wearing a suit and tie. She had a look of suffering on her face, which he was ignorant of or indifferent to, but she was listening politely to him. A member of Congressman Jaffee's staff? Helena slid behind a pair of men close to Artie's age, exchanging Warehouse stories. Former agents. There couldn't be that many here, she must be one of the few. Strange to think of herself in any context to which "former" might apply though it was one of the most fundamentally true things about her. She had outlived so many people, so many eras, and "former" was ghostly, pointing toward someone or some time that once existed but was no longer, and she was no ghost. She was here, unmistakably, undeniably, solidly here, but she was also only a former, former agent (twice), former author, former inventor (well, occasionally she still tinkered), former - no, always and forever a mother. Even if she were to outlive her only child by more than a thousand years. Former lover, countless times over, practically a "former" before the relationship even started, one foot out of the bed, on the floor, seeking the easy exit.

She was nearing the edge of the tent. She would walk around the campus, make some half-hearted attempt to find Myka, and then revisit the tent one more time, repeat her congratulations to Vanessa and Artie, say good-bye to Pete and Claudia. Maybe try to catch one last glimpse of Drew. It would be easier to see Myka that way, blurred and refracted in her son.

"Hello, Helena." It came from beside her. The shadows were thicker on this side, or just possibly Mrs. Frederic had summoned the shadows to her. Helena wouldn't put it past her. She was sitting on a wooden folding chair, hands clasped in her lap. She was dressed in a suit, as she always had been the times Helena had seen her, its boxy cut, Helena had learned only later, long after there was little likelihood that she could expect to see Mrs. Frederic suddenly appear in the same room with her, in the style of women's suits from the 1950s, as if Mrs. Frederic were routinely dressed by Edith Head. Which Helena also wouldn't put past her. The hairstyle hadn't changed either, still an intricate woven structure that resembled, when it reached certain heights, the Tower of Babel. But even in the shadows, Helena could discern how much white was intermixed now with the brown and how the suit was, just perhaps, a little too square, Mrs. Frederic's always generous proportions having shrunk over the years. "Walk with me."

The habit of issuing invitations as commands hadn't changed. Or maybe there had never been invitations, only commands. She pushed herself up from the chair with difficulty, Helena trying to hold it steady for her. After a grave wobble, the chair righted itself, and Mrs. Frederic stood, one hand balanced on Helena's arm, the other adjusting the hem of her skirt. She leaned on Helena's arm as Helena led her across the grass to a sidewalk. Once on the concrete Helena half-expected Mrs. Frederic to release her arm, but though her grip lightened, becoming no more than a touch, the hand remained. As they walked, Mrs. Frederic proceeding at a slow pace with no visible stiffness or difficulty, Helena was reminded of Sunday afternoons in London, when she was a young woman escorting her grandmother on a stroll. There was a similar imperiousness to the two women, Helena mused, but whereas Mrs. Frederic carried the burden of the Warehouse and its artefacts, her grandmother had treated of great moment the quality of the day's dinner, complaining to Helena with an outrage suggesting that sacrilege had been committed if the lamb was overcooked.

Mrs. Frederic was silent for so long that Helena began to believe she had only been seeking someone to walk with her and Helena had happened to be the first person passing by. Having rarely if ever engaged in casual conversations with Mrs. Frederic, Helena was unsure how to start one, but she inclined her head toward the housing. "Claudia said the Warehouse was under congressional oversight now. Is this whole compound, for lack of a better term, related to it?"

"Nominally we're under the aegis of the Department of Homeland Security," Mrs. Frederic said with an irritable wave of her hand. "And, yes, now we have bureaucrats conducting audits and teams of scientists wanting to subject the Warehouse and its artefacts to various experiments, but who we are and what our mission is remain unchanged. This, this," the sweep of her hand was more expansive but no less irritable, "is simply the clutter we have to work around."

"Is having to dance attendance on Congressman Jaffee and his staff also mere clutter?" Helena asked, her eyebrow skeptically arched.

The look Mrs. Frederic gave her would have struck terror into most agents and even quieted Artie, but Helena didn't answer to this woman anymore. So she reminded herself. "Unfortunately, much of Claudia's, and the regents', time is spent advocating for the Warehouse's independence from any government's interference, including that of its host. Of course, the more we advocate, the more the government resists, and visits by Congressman Jaffee and his colleagues are not infrequent. But I didn't ask you to walk with me to discuss what has happened to the Warehouse since you've been gone. I asked you to walk with me because I need to know much you've changed."

"Need to know?" Helena repeated with doubting emphasis. There was nothing the Warehouse or those connected with it "needed" to know about her. They were nearing a wrought-iron bench placed thoughtfully under some shade trees, which in fifteen years would actually provide some welcome shade. But the trees were too small to do more against the sun than cast fragmentary shadows. Mrs. Frederic, however, seemed not to mind, settling herself on the bench. "My father was a preacher, did I ever tell you that?" Helena shook her head, keeping her wonder at the non sequitur to herself. "The older I get the less uncomfortable I am using his language. I asked you to walk with me because I want to assess the state of your soul, Helena."

"What does the state of my soul, supposing I have one, have to do with anything?" Helena sat down beside her.

"It has to do with your fitness," Mrs. Frederic said enigmatically. For the first time since she had spoken to Helena under the tent, Mrs. Frederic smiled at her, although Helena didn't feel more comforted by its appearance.

"My father was a kind and generous man, willing to give the shirt off his back to anyone in need, although my mother joked that someone should explain to him that it was only a metaphor. But his sermons were full of hellfire and brimstone. The devil was as real to him as his children were, and he was often called upon to cast Satan out of some poor soul. I loved my father very much, but I lived in constant fear that the devil might take up residence in me." She paused for a beat, glancing out of the side of her eyes at Helena. "I'm not boring you, am I? Because I do have a point." Helena noticed that she had been gently swinging one of her legs. She stopped.

"One day my brother Howard had aggravated me beyond the limits of my patience, I threw an iron at him, and it hit him on the head. He clutched his head and screamed as the blood poured down his face. I ran and hid under the porch of our house convinced that I had killed him." Mrs. Frederic sighed, eyes cloudy with memories. "Howard was a horrible, mean-spirited little boy who became a horrible, mean-spirited little man, but that isn't the point of my story." She shifted, turning toward Helena, their knees almost touching. "I stayed under the porch for hours, praying for forgiveness, and when my father finally found me, I wouldn't come out since I was certain I was one of the damned, and a member of the damned couldn't live in Pastor Vaughn's house. But he crawled under the porch to join me - and he wasn't a small man so I can't imagine how miserable that must have been for him - and reassured me that God would forgive me if I was truly repentant. There was only one sin that God couldn't forgive, and it was not murdering your brother. Why if that were true, he said, half the people in the Bible couldn't have been forgiven."

She was looking expectantly at Helena, and Helena, pleased with herself that she wasn't rolling her eyes, asked obediently, if somewhat sarcastically, "What's the sin God can't forgive? You'll have to excuse me, my family was observant in the well-bred Anglican way that assumed hell was something only the lower classes had to fear."

Her voice soft, Mrs. Frederic said, "My father closed his hand in a fist and said that when your heart became too small and hard to ask for forgiveness that was the sin God wouldn't forgive."

"Do you think my soul has shriveled to the size of a walnut?" Helena was undecided whether she should be amused or insulted. She would never have believed Mrs. Frederic a candidate for dementia, but this wandering tale about irons and souls and forgiveness was so unlike what Helena remembered as Mrs. Frederic's usual mode of speech, decisive, brief, and, at times, maddeningly cryptic, that she had to entertain the possibility.

"I was less worried about your soul when you were planning to end the world," Mrs. Frederic said, and Helena was surprised to feel herself flushing. "At least then you still felt the world was worth taking on."

"Is this all because I left the Warehouse for good?"

"It's because of what you left the Warehouse for," Mrs. Frederic said. "You've become, what, an appraiser of Victorian-era antiques and memorabilia? I assume you must be able to do that in your sleep. A woman of your talents ought to ask more of herself."

Helena felt the flush intensify, but she kept her voice even. "Considering how I used to employ my talents, you ought to be grateful that I live so quietly. And as for asking for forgiveness, I would ask for it every day for what I've done, but there is no one out there to hear my pleas."

"Is it that you think there's no one to hear your pleas, or that he - or she - won't listen to them? Forgiveness is just that, a gift. It's not assured and can't be expected. That's the one thing my father wasn't willing to tell his seven-year-old daughter. It's enough to make anyone stop asking, especially if her sins are, let us say, significant."

Helena repressed the desire to rub her temples. She wasn't surprised that Mrs. Frederic knew what she had been doing to make a living for the past several years, but she was surprised that Mrs. Frederic cared. After Boone, when she had turned over every last thing that had tied her to the Warehouse, practically given the regents the lint from her pockets to ensure there would no longer be an association, no one had asked her where she was going to go or what she was going to do. And had the regents asked, she wouldn't have been able to tell them. Yet here, today, Mrs. Frederic had the gall to disapprove. Helena didn't owe her anything. She didn't owe Artie forgiveness, and she didn't owe Claudia an apology for her silence. Possibly, maybe, she had owed Myka the truth. But that had been a long time ago, and the truth had a way of looking different each time you held it up to the light.

She had done enough today. She had come to South Dakota, to Univille, to its campus, and she had seen Pete and Claudia and Vanessa and Artie and spoken with them and pretended that her coming back was of no great import, as if she had been just an agent who had briefly lived and worked with them. She had met Drew, and if that was all of Myka she would take away with her that was enough. She stood up, holding out her hand to Mrs. Frederic. "If you're ready, I thought we could return to the reception. I have an early morning flight out, and, while I hate to admit it, it's been a long day for me."

Helena bit back a smile at the annoyance that flashed across Mrs. Frederic's face. The old woman didn't like surrendering control. "Despite what you may think, this hasn't been the wool-gathering of a woman approaching senility, Helena. Every agent, every caretaker has done things that do not rest easy on her conscience; the measure of her is in how willing she is to carry that burden. Ten years ago, you cut yourself off from us and you disappeared. To end up charging exorbitant fees for verifying the authenticity of a sideboard that could very well have been in your family home."

Helena felt ridiculous holding out a hand that Mrs. Frederic was in no hurry to take, but she wouldn't give her the satisfaction of sitting down. Childish, yes, Helena acknowledged, but she wasn't above it. "The things that burden my conscience aren't things I did for the sake of the Warehouse or 'our mission,' as you put it. I was in service only to my own needs and obsessions, as you well know."

Mrs. Frederic nestled her chin deeper into the scarf that lined the neck of her suit. The tucking of her chin could possibly be taken for a nod of agreement or even concession, but her next words undercut such an assumption. "You may have severed your connection to the Warehouse, but it hasn't severed its connection to you. And that it hasn't chosen to do so, I have to take on trust. God may not play dice with the universe, but that doesn't mean that He – or She – won't let it have its crotchets."

"Meaning?" Helena said impatiently. The mini-bar in her hotel room would not be enough to put this day to rest. She would have to order some horrendous bottle of wine from the room service menu, a vintage from Nebraska, no doubt, that she would shudder her way through.

"Meaning that while I don't understand why, the Warehouse still believes we can use you, Helena. I'm not sure I like the idea very much, but I don't know that we have any alternative."

"Mrs. F., Irene, we don't want to be scaring off H.G. just as she's arrived." Claudia was miraculously at Helena's elbow, staring hard at her mentor. Apparently the ability to be "magicked" from one place to another was a transferable power as well. But Claudia's appearance carried with it the air of a harried commuter rather than the unruffledness, which her predecessor had never failed to convey, of someone who, just moments before, had been helped from a chauffeured limousine. Claudia's linen suit was even more rumpled and her hair was mussed, as though she had been constantly running her fingers through it. "I thought we were going to give her a little time to get reacclimated. You know, get all of the 'Hey, how have you been?' 'We've missed you,' 'What was all that going on between you and Myka back then?' out of the way before we sprang it on her."

"If by 'it' you mean my helping the Warehouse, there would be no easing of me into that," Helena said. She stepped around Claudia, leaving Mrs. Frederic to her. "I think I'll continue my self-guided tour of the campus, but I'll try to drop by the tent again before I leave."

Claudia touched her arm. "Seriously, H.G., if you have plans to leave tomorrow, cancel them. We need to talk to you." It landed somewhere between a request and an order, and though Claudia was trying to wear an ingratiating smile, she was too tired to wear it well. While she might be at the beck and call of congressmen and their staff, she was also accustomed to having people do what she said. She was comfortable with her authority, something the Claudia of old wouldn't have hesitated to mock. And envy.

Helena responded with her best noncommittal smile. She hadn't put more than a few feet of grass the color of the plastic grass in Easter baskets between them, when she heard Mrs. Frederic say warningly behind her, "Time's running out on you, Helena." She didn't stop walking, although she was fairly certain that Mrs. Frederic and Claudia had seen her back stiffen. As she passed the tent, she nodded to a few people who raised their hands in acknowledging waves. She didn't know them. They probably would realize as they exchanged glances and a "Was that?" with each other that they didn't know her either. She wasn't sure where she was headed, other than away. But her path was unerringly taking her closer to the B&B.

The garden at the back of B&B had been enlarged, with gravel paths and benches for sitting added. The old unkempt shrubbery, with its spiky, bristly growth, like a vegetative five o'clock shadow, had been removed, and smaller, more visitor-friendly bushes had been planted in its place. There were metal plates stuck in the soil next to all the flowers and plants, identifying whether they were native to the region or introduced. The gravel was a virginal white and showed signs of having been recently raked, and the benches were so freshly stained that Helena was leery of sitting down on one. But she wasn't yet ready to enter the B&B. The sun room, which had doubled as a breakfast room, was still where it used to be, with its french doors opening out onto the garden, but she couldn't locate the kitchen, and when she shaded her eyes with her hand to look up at the second floor, nothing about it looked familiar. She hadn't thought she was sentimental about the B it had always uncomfortably reminded her that they were contemporaries. The creak of its floorboards, the groaning of its walls during a South Dakota winter, every affliction of its old age had underscored to her what a fraud she was. She didn't belong there, or if she did, it should have been in some sepia-tinted photograph of the home's original owners. But it was disorienting to look at something so familiar and yet, on some level, not be able to recognize it. She had no idea where to look for her old bedroom; she couldn't tell whether she was on the wrong or right side of the building.

She heard voices coming from around the corner, a man's and a woman's. He was thanking her for her time, but he sounded less appreciative than vaguely peevish, as if he was asking himself why he should be thanking her. Helena caught a glimpse of a blue suit, carefully groomed salt and pepper hair. The congressman. Then her voice, Myka's voice, and it wasn't so much its timbre that caught at Helena as its edge, so blunted by politeness and patience and studied good humor that someone who didn't know her, like the congressman, might mistake it for a bit of overearnestness. Helena had heard it too many times when someone was attempting to dodge their questions about an artefact; while she had gone in for sarcasm, Myka had simply continued probing, never letting her temper get the best of her, but at the same time signaling to her partner in her very deliberateness that she recognized what a pain in the ass they were dealing with. The congressman, responding to what he thought was sincere gratitude for having monopolized her time, reassured Myka that there was no aspect of the Warehouse's operations that he wouldn't want to thoroughly investigate. Another voice, another man's, cut in, reminding the congressman that he had a meeting in Rapid City to attend, and then the congressman was moving, feet crunching on gravel, Myka already forgotten. A flash of black, and Helena wanted to turn her head away, a reflex as stupid as it was self-protective since it would only draw attention to her not wanting to draw attention.

"Helena?" Myka was there, in front of her.

She was wearing a cocktail dress and her hair up, a double rarity as far as Helena could recall. In combination with the lines around her mouth and at her eyes that Helena didn't remember, couldn't remember, because they hadn't been there ten years ago, the formality of her appearance made Myka seem not older so much as at a remove, as if Helena were seeing her through glass. Or, Helena ruefully acknowledged, given how lovely Myka still was, as if she were relegated, like the star-struck at a premiere, to staring at her from the cordoned-off margins of the red carpet. But without realizing that she was moving, Helena was standing, the distance receding, as the both of them leaned into an awkward embrace. Their hands fluttered briefly at each other's waist and then they were leaning away, their smiles hesitant, peeping, as though newly hatched, at the corners of their lips.

Helena struggled to say something, anything, that would attempt to disguise how nakedly she was cataloging every part of Myka, comparing her to the image she had carried in her mind. The hair, the deep, rich brown she remembered, smoothed but not tamed into a twist, curls in active rebellion against the restraint, suggesting that the twist was only a firm tug from being undone. The eyes, more green than hazel, always seeming to be on the verge of widening with surprise or delight. The skeptical angle of her mouth at war with the open curiosity of her eyes. "I met Drew," Helena finally said. A necessary clearing of her throat, then stronger, "He looks like you."

"No, he doesn't," Myka said chidingly, the way she used to when she caught Helena in a lie or one of her more theatrical exaggerations.

"He reminds me of you, then," Helena said, slipping without thought into the mock exasperated tone she would adopt to parry Myka's chiding.

Myka's smile became a grin. "That I'll accept." Her grin didn't fade, but she uneasily lifted a shoulder. "I don't know what to say to you that wouldn't be trite or clichéd."

Helena became aware that she had fixed on Myka's shoulders, their breadth, the sweep of muscle from neck to bone. Myka was taller than average, but not tall, her shoulders broad, but not exceptionally so, yet Helena's memory of Myka pinning her to the wall with casual force was one of her strongest. All the subsequent memories she had formed of her, no matter that they were memories of Myka's more impressive or endearing qualities, had never lessened the power of that early one. When it struck her as funny and not pitiable, Helena would ask herself how the great H.G. Wells could have enshrined a memory that might as well have been a scene from a bodice-ripper, in which the hapless heroine (not really hapless just momentarily at a disadvantage) is manhandled by her antagonist-and-future-lover. The antagonist part had been true to life, if temporary, the future lover had remained imaginary.

"I'd offer you a tour of the B&B, but there's little you would remember of it and what's new is pretty forgettable. It's a conference center, except for the second floor and Claudia's wing."

Grateful for something to look at that wasn't Myka, Helena twisted her head to take in as much of the B&B as she could. "Claudia has a wing?"

Myka pointed to the extension on the B&B's far side. "She lives here, more or less. And that's where the old B&B is, if you want to see it. She swears there was no 'artefacting' involved in the recreation, but you half-expect Leena to pop out from the kitchen."

Helena was reminded of Artie's quiet "She should have been here" and his admission about not forgiving himself. Shaking her head to banish the thought, she said, "And the second floor?"

"Apartments for some of the agents. One of the few changes most of us approved of, no more trying to squeeze an adult-sized life into a teenager's bedroom." With an off-handedness that wasn't quite successful, Myka said, "Pete lives in one of them."

There was no deft avoidance of the subject of their divorce, although Helena assumed that Myka didn't want to talk about it any more than she did. Which left silence and staring. Because Helena was still staring. It wasn't just Myka's shoulders, it was all of her in that tight black sheath. Myka had always referred to herself as a nerd and a bookworm, and though she had laughingly declined Helena's offers to teach her kenpo, she had had her own ways of keeping in shape. Running primarily. Helena would see her leave the B&B at an absurdly early hour, long before anyone else was up except for Helena, who just didn't sleep, dressed in shorts and tanks in the summer, pants and hoodies when it was cooler, her hair pulled back in a rubber band, her face stern in concentration.

"Do you still run?" Helena asked softly.

Myka nodded, surprised. "Every morning." She took a deep breath. "Did Claudia speak to you?"

Helena didn't have to ask Myka what she meant. "Mrs. Frederic did." She bent to her side and pretended to read the name plate of a plant growing next to the bench. "The wonders may be endless, but my capacity to experience them is not. Whatever it is they want to ask of me I can't do."

"I guess that's an end to solving puzzles and saving the day."

Helena straightened. Myka's eyes had narrowed to a squint, although the sun wasn't directly shining on them. "Not for another team," Helena attempted lightly. She had never found Myka's expressions difficult to read, but she couldn't tell what Myka was thinking now. She was out of practice. Or Myka's reserve had hardened into armor over the years.

"If you change your mind, there's a meeting tomorrow morning. Here, in Claudia's wing." Myka's face relaxed into a smile, albeit a half-hearted one. "I don't know if you're still a night owl, but the meeting won't be until ten. I have to drop Drew off at math camp."

Silly of Helena to think that a child of Myka Bering could be left to enjoy his summer vacation. "Math camp?"

"He likes it," Myka said defensively. "All right," she conceded with a sigh, "I had to bribe him to do it with the promise of soccer camp."

"Ah, he takes after his father." Another silence, but this time Helena was staring at the gravel under her feet. Raising her eyes to Myka's, she said, "I won't be able to make it, I'm leaving early tomorrow."

"Of course."

Myka had said it quickly, but Helena thought she could hear an unspoken yet sarcastic "you are." Of course you are. Fleeing, running, abandoning. But perhaps that was only her inner voice sneering at her. It did that with annoying frequency. Myka's eyes told her nothing, the green irises with their hazel flecks, or maybe, after all, they were hazel irises with green flecks, were empty of derision, empty of any emotion. They were the eyes of a woman she had last spoken to ten years ago. There were no hidden emotions to parse.

Myka began to teeter away from her, anxious to leave. "I haven't been down to Artie's reception yet. I hope to see you before you go."

Helena watched her exit the garden, not with the swinging graceful strides she remembered but with more measured, more careful steps. She wasn't used to the heels. Helena's path was to the parking lot, which was past the B&B in the opposite direction. But instead she found herself heading in the direction of the tent. She wouldn't go in, she promised herself, she would just take one last look.

The distance seemed shorter this time, the commons was smaller or the tent was closer to the B&B than she had thought. She stood outside the tent. She spied Claudia's rumpled pantsuit in passing, and she was sure Mrs. Frederic was under the canopy, sitting in the shadows and brooding over the parlous condition of Helena's soul. About to turn away, she was again arrested by Myka's voice. She and Drew and Pete were emerging, Pete ruffling his son's hair and Myka fondly looking over her shoulder at the both of them. It seemed right, somehow, the three of them until Myka stopped, as if sensing someone was staring at her, and spun to face Helena, and then everything suddenly seemed out of balance, as if what could have been, what had been, and what was were commingling. It wasn't new to her, this dizzying feeling of occupying multiple worlds, but it had been a very long time since Myka had been in all of the worlds with her.

Myka looked at her questioningly, and Drew, noticing that his mother's attention had been drawn away, turned to look at Helena, too, and he looked at her with the same directness, the same inquiry written on his face.

She had had no answer then, and she had no answer now. She didn't run exactly, but she pushed herself back toward the B&B, toward the parking lot with great speed. Finally locating her unremarkable rental car in the midst of all the other sensible, four door sedans in the lot, she slid in behind the steering wheel and sank against the back of the seat. She would drive back to her hotel, lock herself in her room, drain the mini bar dry and, after a sleepless night, catch her flight out to Boston, no, Philadelphia. No, back to New York, home, now, of all places.

Yes, that's exactly what she would do, she told herself as she retrieved her phone and checked her flight. She was still telling herself it was exactly what she would do when she cancelled her reservation.


	2. Chapter 2

**A/N: Occasional use of crude language**

Helena stood outside the B&B, a box of pastries in one hand, a recyclable 20 ounce cup of Earl Grey in the other. She supposed she could just enter and hope there was someone, a security guard, an agent, a lurking congressional staffer, to whom she could announce herself and ask for Claudia. It felt odd to feel so uncertain about entering the B it also felt odd to be carrying pastries. But this was a morning meeting, and there had always been food at the morning meetings, even if it was no more than all of them carrying their bowls of cereals or cups of tea and coffee to the sun room. There was a bakery down the street from her hotel, and after her usual restless night, made all the more restless by the fact that she had cancelled her flight out without even really understanding why, she had been at its doors before it opened.

There hadn't been a bakery in Univille when she had lived at the B&B. Or a coffee shop. There had been a diner, which offered a fish fry on Fridays and meatloaf on Mondays. The only tea on its menu had been Lipton. There hadn't been hotels, plural. There had been a motel on the edge of town, the Badlands Inn, which offered two parallel rows of rooms whose windows either looked on to the parking lot in front or the stretch of weedy grass in back. Univille had been no different from any other town in the rural Midwest, in her admittedly limited experience. A gas station, a diner, a bar, a grocery mart, and a scattering of homes. If you had wanted something more, you drove the hour it took to get to Rapid City. But now its sleepiness had a slightly self-conscious air, as if Univille had realized that its isolation and lack of attractions were valuable to someone. Namely the government someones whom Helena had encountered in the hotel's fitness room at 5 am and in the bakery two hours later, their constant, ill-disguised scrutiny of their surroundings more so than their workout habits or their business casual attire marking them as new to town. It was one thing to be bordering a top-secret facility so remote and so esoteric in its work that the government itself probably believed it was an IRS warehouse, quite another to be bordering that facility when the government chose to remember what it was.

The government someones had wanted lodgings with treadmills and elliptical machines, and they had wanted their coffee freshly ground and brewed by baristas. They also wanted something less heart-attack-inducing than the double bacon breakfast special at the diner. Helena, a little hung over and still dehydrated, no matter that she had downed two bottles of water before taking a run on the treadmill, had benefited from the government someones' predilections by having the option of dragging herself down to the fitness room, by being able to buy a 20 oz Earl Grey, by allowing herself to be indecisive about whether she wanted a chocolate croissant or a blueberry scone and then choosing both. Like the blind boring of termites, the government somethings, in their ceaseless investigation of the Warehouse's operations and personnel might be undermining all that made the Warehouse what it was, but Helena couldn't regret the changes to Univille.

A moment before Claudia hadn't been on the B&B's verandah, but in the time it had taken for Helena to glance down at her box of pastries and then glance back up, which was no time at all,

Claudia had appeared. The jeans were black but not aesthetically torn, the belt was also black but not studded, and the top was simply a casual top in a very unClaudia-like royal blue. "Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in," she said in a horrible Pacino imitation. "Is that how you're feeling today?"

"Did you guess that I would show up for the meeting, or did you sense a disturbance in the Force?" Helena asked as she approached the verandah's steps.

"Look at you, H.G., playing name that movie," Claudia said, reaching for the box of pastries. She led Helena into the B&B's foyer, which still retained the old hardwood flooring, restored to a gleaming finish, but that was about all. The foyer had been enlarged to include a casual seating area, just off to the side of a large reception/security counter, fashioned from a slightly lighter wood than the flooring and similarly gleaming. No one was yet manning it, and Claudia paid it no attention, heading down a corridor that seemed to separate the business part of the B&B from a more private area. There was only one door, at the corridor's end, and Claudia casually pushed it open. "Welcome to my digs," she said. "By the way, should I still be calling you H.G.?"

It was the old B&B, down to the rag rugs on the no-longer-gleaming hardwood floor. The staircase to the second floor was next to her, the sun room was across the foyer and through the french doors. If she turned and went past the staircase, down the hall, she would be in the kitchen. She tentatively touched the bannister, not sure but what her fingers wouldn't go through it, and looked up. "I wouldn't have it any other way, darling." Which was true. Although no one had called her H.G. in years, 'Helena' wouldn't sound right coming from Claudia, or Pete, for that matter. She was still looking up, trying to remember which room she had occupied. Had she been down from Myka or across from her?

"Go up if you want. I knocked out some of the walls to make a bigger bedroom, but otherwise it looks the same."

Not that she had any fear of being overwhelmed by memories, since the second floor didn't hold many for her, her bedroom only being the place where she had slept, or, as was more often the case, unsuccessfully waited for sleep, but Helena preferred not to take Claudia up on her invitation. Instead she nodded her head toward the sun room. "Are we meeting in there?

"Pete and Jane are already here. We're just waiting on Myka and Mrs. F."

"Jane Lattimer?"

"Our eminence grise among the regents," Claudia said. Realizing that Helena's puzzled expression hadn't changed, she explained, "Kosan found he couldn't stomach all the wrangling with deputy directors, assistant deputy directors, managing associate directors, and deputy assistant managers. Okay, I might have made the last one up, but it takes a certain talent to handle all the underlings and their underlings."

"The patience of a former schoolteacher, perhaps," Helena said dryly.

"It also doesn't hurt that, somehow, she has clout in Washington," Claudia said out of the corner of her mouth as she opened the sun room's doors.

Pete sat across from his mother, and seeing their faces, together, in profile, Helena was struck by their resemblance. The same pronounced chins, straight blunt noses, and high foreheads. She had always found Jane one of the more reasonable - and shrewder - of the regents, and especially when Helena's appreciation of Pete was at a low ebb, she had found it hard to believe they were related. Myka had always urged her to look past his antics, to consider them protective coloring, and she wondered now if Myka, as usual, hadn't been right.

"Helena, it's good to see you," Jane said, rising, and shook her hand. "Claudia, you better put that box down before Pete starts drooling." She gave her son a wryly affectionate glance before turning her attention back to Helena. Her eyes were blue, not brown, and they had never been lit with her son's manic gaiety, at least not to Helena's knowledge. Jane was regarding her with a look that Helena suspected had greeted the children in her classroom year after year, knowing, amused, and carrying a hint of steel. It said there was no trick you could play on her that she wouldn't be wise to. She looked like a schoolteacher today, too; her white hair was drawn back in a bun, and she was wearing an unfashionably long skirt and flats. "As soon as the others get here, we'll tell you what all this is about."

Pete was hovering over the pastries. "Do I go for the bear claw or the apple fritter?" He sighed before taking them both from the box.

"Whatever looks deep fried in that box is for you," Helena said.

Pete clapped one hand over his heart, while the other crammed the better portion of the fritter into his mouth. "You don't have to keep that unrequited passion for me hidden any longer," he said, working the pastry to the side of his mouth as he spoke. "I'm yours for the taking, H.G."

"I'm afraid I'll have to decline the offer," she said absently, opening the folder Jane had placed in front of her. Inside were pictures of artefacts, with summaries of their properties. The material wasn't unlike the information inside the assignment folders that Artie would pass out during meetings, except the summaries for these artefacts included the dates they had been retrieved and stored in the Warehouse. These weren't new or missing artefacts; they had already been found. She frowned and shot a glance at Jane.

"I know," Jane said. "That's one of the things we'll explain."

Pete's voice cut across his mother's. "That's going to be a doozy. But first things first, were you just telling me that you're taken? Has some lucky man - or woman - tamed your wild heart?"

The french doors behind them closed, and Myka, folders in the crook of one arm and keys dangling from her hand, the other hand pushing sunglasses over her forehead, circled the table and took a chair an equal distance from her former husband and her former mother-in-law. She dumped the folders and the keys on the table. "Don't get ahead of yourself, Pete. The official interrogation has been scheduled for later." There was no surprise in the friendly smile she gave Helena, but there was also no particular warmth to it, the smile suggesting that Helena was no more than the office mate two rows of cubicles over.

Helena sent a glare in Claudia's direction. "Did you tell everyone I was coming?"

Claudia had opened a laptop once she sat down and had never lifted her eyes from it, other than to select a pineapple danish from the box. She didn't lift them now. "I would have known if you left the area, H.G. There are precious few perks to being a caretaker, but that's one of them. If you were still here, that meant you were coming to the meeting." Tilting her head ever so slightly in Jane's direction, she said, "I'm almost done with the scans. Everything looks clean, so far."

"So," Pete said, bending his fingers in a beckoning motion. "Enough with the misdirection, H.G. Inquiring minds want to know. Did you turn down my proposal because you've given your heart to another?"

"Give it up, Pete," Myka muttered, sliding the topmost folder from her stack.

Perhaps she was irritated that they had known she was coming to the meeting before she did. Or possibly she was nettled by Myka's indifference to her romantic status, although after ten years of silence there was no reason for Myka to care. More importantly, why would she care whether Myka cared? Maybe she was also just a little bit disgruntled because even in faded jeans and a summer-weight v-neck sweater, Myka was undeniably. . . fetching. Helena was reluctant to admit to the inner whispering of a stronger adjective. Responding to Pete's teasing, she said archly, "Monogamy's never been my strong suit, darling." Myka remained absorbed by the contents of her folder, not so much as an involuntary twitch disrupting her calm concentration.

"Ooooh, still playing the field, are we? Maybe you and I, we can hit the night spots in Univille." Pete grinned and pulled apart his bear claw.

"Which one? Taco Bell or Applebee's?"

Pete laughed, stuffing half of the bear claw into his mouth. "Sad but true."

Claudia closed her laptop. "Scans are done. We can talk freely as soon as Mrs. F. arrives."

There had been no opening or closing of the doors, but Mrs. Frederic was already taking a seat next to Myka. "Then let's proceed," she said, her gaze, as it settled briefly on Helena, cool and measuring.

"Scans, talking freely? Are we supposed to be hermetically sealed?" Helena asked. She had held off for as long as she could, but the print of the artefact summaries was beginning to swim in front of her. She opened the small satchel she had brought with her and fished for her reading glasses. Why she was embarrassed by having to use reading glasses in front of them, she didn't know, since her age had always been an easy target for Pete and Claudia, and sometimes for Myka as well; she was only slightly mollified to see that Pete was moving his folder up to and then away from his eyes and squinting at the print.

"Go get your glasses, dear," his mother said.

"Eh, I'm fine without them." He took in Helena's glasses. "On her, they're hot. Hey, H.G., when you're out looking for love, do you find that those work for you?"

That comment Helena ignored, and Mrs. Frederic impatiently cleared her throat. Claudia mumbled, "Dude, really, am I gonna have to have Myka send you through sensitivity training again?" After a sharp look from Mrs. Frederic, Claudia said, "Yeah, about the scans and the talking freely. There's kind of a trust issue between us and the DHS, meaning they don't trust us and we don't trust them. They've tried to bug my rooms more than once, and we've gone old school with the folders and the paper, like Artie did back in the day, because they track who accesses the Warehouse systems and what they're looking at. We'd prefer the DHS know as little as possible about this meeting."

"Meaning that your superiors don't know about this problem you've discovered." Helena sighed, rubbing her forehead.

"I wouldn't call them our superiors," Pete grumbled.

"I don't understand why you're under their authority in the first place. Warehouses have existed for centuries with little to no interference. Why the change?" Helena put her hand out to forestall the easy answer. "And don't tell me it's because of the internet. The internet existed when I was an agent here, and there was no hue and cry for government oversight."

"True," Jane said. "But the internet has changed since you were an agent, and smart phones didn't exist, or at least they were in their infancy back then. Everything's a potential photo for posting or a tweet."

"Do you know how many times I've been on YouTube?" Pete demanded. "Actually," he said, expression turning thoughtful, "that's kind of cool." The he assumed a comically stern look and a lower voice, saying, "But it's bad, very bad for Warehouse business."

"It got harder and harder to explain the Teslas and the purple gloves and the bagging," Claudia said, pulling the box of pastries closer to her. "The political climate's changed, too. There was the fallout from WikiLeaks and, of course, the stuff that went down with Snowden. And saying we were with the IRS wasn't helping to make people any less suspicious. No one still knows quite what we do, but there are sure a hell of a lot more people involved in the not-knowing." She pursed her lips in consideration of the remaining pastries. "Some of these have an H.G.-look to them, you know, the scones, the croissants. I don't want to take something you want."

"Darling, take whichever one you want. It doesn't matter to me," Helena said.

At that, Myka rose from her chair and leaned over the table to look into the box. "She doesn't mean that." She paused, biting her lip. "Don't take the chocolate croissant."

Claudia frowned. "Yeah, but she said. . . ."

"Oh, God," Pete said, drawing down his cheeks with his hands. "How could I have forgotten the road trips with the two of you." Adopting a falsetto, he said, "'Helena, do you prefer a classical station or jazz? 'Myka, it really doesn't matter to me, just pick one.' 'I think I'll go with jazz.' 'Fine.' 'Are you sure you don't have a preference?' 'None at all, darling.' 'You know what? I think I'll go with pop.' 'You'll have to remove my cold, dead hands from the radio before you do that.' And then Myka's all smug as she turns it to the classical station, because she knew that's the one H.G. really wanted all along. She just wanted to see if she could provoke H.G. into giving herself away. They could spend hours trying to fake each other out. Claud, take the chocolate chip and strawberry swirl scone. I'm pretty sure H.G. believes that's a travesty of sconedom."

Both Myka and Helena looked at him admiringly. "I'm a higher primate," Pete said. "I'm capable of learning if the behavior's repeated often enough."

"Can we return to the matter at hand?" Mrs. Frederic said testily.

"Which is?" Helena asked. "I've been looking at the artefacts in the folder, and they're all here, in the Warehouse. I can't understand why that would be a problem."

Myka said slowly, "It isn't. We believe these are artefacts that have been copied."

"There have been replicas of artefacts before," Helena said. "Timothy Leary's reading glasses, for one." She didn't have Myka's eidetic memory, but hers was very good, all the same. She had just never cared much for details, believing that the endless hunt for such artefact-pollen was for the worker bees. When she had said as much, years ago, Myka had laughingly accused her of thinking she was the queen bee. Helena hadn't denied the charge, claiming with a dramatic haughtiness that it was self-evident she was the queen. She and Myka had been smiling at each other until the amusement in Myka's face had given way to something reckless and challenging, and she had leaned over the front seat of the SUV saying quietly, so that Pete, sitting behind the wheel couldn't hear, "Try to lord it over me." Funny how for a woman impatient with details, she still remembered that one. But Myka seemed not to be remembering the same moment, and Helena, forcing her mind back to replicated artefacts, said, "But their powers are generally weaker. Is that not the situation here?"

Given the sober expression on Myka's face, memories of flirtations with old partners weren't distractions. "The objects haven't been replicated, only their properties. Which, of course, makes the new artefacts that much harder to find. Take Jonas Salk's lab coat, for instance." She took a page from her folder and waved it at Helena. "It makes the wearer immune to physical injury, but it also makes her susceptible to hallucinations, fugue states -"

"Makes her looney-tunes, as our Mr. Sensitive would say," Claudia said, looking narrowly at Pete. "Salk, earlier in his career, tested vaccines on patients in state asylums. You know, back in the good old days, when mental illness, like being black or gay or a woman, made you slightly less than human, in other words, great unwitting test fodder." Claudia eyed her chocolate chip and strawberry scone suspiciously before taking a tiny bite.

"We retrieved the lab coat in San Francisco nine months ago," Myka said, "from a race car driver who had a talent for walking away from fatal crashes. Since then, we've retrieved six more artefacts from San Francisco having the same property. A stethoscope, a scapel, and a test tube," she paused. "Then a compact mirror, a visor, and a wristwatch."

Helena shrugged. "It's not uncommon to run across artefacts that have very similar properties. The vast majority of us, despite our tendency to believe otherwise, really aren't all that unique. How can you be sure that isn't the case?"

"Because the first side effect is the same and because the new artefacts tend to have occurred in clusters, in the same locations, over a relatively short period of time," Myka said.

"First side effect?" Helena hadn't missed the emphasis.

Myka hesitated, but only for a moment. "There are other, more permanent ones, like irreversible coma and death," she said ruefully. "We don't know how soon they happen, but we think the time period is short. A couple of months, maybe less than that. Six replicated artefacts, six people, six deaths."

"Are you sure the properties of the original artefacts haven't simply been transferred?" Helena asked.

"We retested the original artefacts," Pete said. "They still have their mojo."

Helena stared at Mrs. Frederic, an ironic smile teasing her mouth. "Perhaps God does play dice with the universe." Mrs. Frederic didn't smile in return, her face impassive. Turning to Jane, Helena said with a lightness that verged on mockery. "Absolutely fascinating. But I'm not sure why you think you need me." To be honest, she was fascinated. This was replication on a level that had never been previously achieved. Dreamed of, yes. Even she had been tantalized by the possibility, when she had hungered to invent whatever was beyond someone else's grasp, if only to prove that it wasn't beyond hers, but she hadn't been that hungry in a very long time.

"Because you're you," Claudia said. "We need someone to figure out how this is happening. The way the artefacts are multiplying we're not going to be able to keep up with them."

"We're chasing our asses right now," Pete said. "Everything's on the verge of spinning out of control."

"All the more reason to bring Homeland Security up to speed. You need resources, and they would be able to give you that." At the look of distaste that crossed Claudia's face, Helena felt a twinge of guilt for bedeviling her, them, with the suggestion, but only a twinge. The problem with secrets was that they tended to make you secretive, and working for an organization that itself was supposed to be secret seemed to foster mistrust and divisiveness more than it did any kind of solidarity. During her time at both Warehouses, she had often lobbed a rational suggestion into discussions grown increasingly rabid as frustrations about artefact-hunting, large and small, led to dark mutterings about bumbling fools from other agencies, imperious caretakers, and interfering regents. Sometimes they would rail against the Warehouse itself, accusing it of making the retrieval harder than it needed to be or actively hampering their searches. Of course, because she was perverse that way or, perhaps, more often because she was bored, Helena had also frequently been the one to plant the initial suspicion of a conspiracy, watching as others nurtured and developed the idea. She had sometimes wondered whether in the mix of all of her psychological frailties there wasn't a bit of pyromania as well, this desire to light fires and then intensify them. But there was actual sincerity in her suggestion this time. She had little to offer that a department of the government couldn't.

Claudia said dismissively, "The last time we reported a 'situation' to the DHS, they put the Warehouse under lockdown. No one could go in or out, and the agents were grounded. It set us back weeks, and that was when we thought one artefact from the Warehouse, one artefact," she said, aggrieved, "was missing. I don't want to imagine how they would overreact to this."

Myka had been studying another folder, but she lifted her head just enough to send a slanted look at Claudia. "She wasn't serious, you know, about bringing in the DHS."

"But I was," Helena said. She waited until Myka cocked her head toward her. "I wasn't just stirring the pot. Maybe this is something that's bigger than all of you." Myka steadily regarded her, while Pete vehemently squirmed his disagreement from his chair. "Were you able to get any information from the race car driver about how he acquired the lab coat or how its properties might have been replicated?"

"He was already on the crazy train when we caught up with him," Pete said. He cocked a finger at Claudia, "You'll have to add that phrase to the 'Peteisms that must not be repeated list.'" Turning back to Helena, he said, "He was still under psychiatric care. We went over his place with a fine-toothed comb, took apart his computer and his phone, and all we found was an online auction site that had been abandoned."

"They're good, whoever they are. I couldn't get anything useful from the site." Claudia broke off a piece of the scone and observed it with interest. "This isn't half-bad, H.G., you should try it."

Jane had pushed her folder away and was abstractedly running a finger over her upper lip. She glanced at Helena, then looked away. "Obviously they're targeting people who have the money to pay for artefacts, and the fact that they've been able to do so discreetly suggests that they already have an existing network they can tap for clients."

"Perhaps one of them is a former Warehouse agent who now makes a living appraising expensive antiques and collectibles," Helena suggested quietly. "She probably has a client base that matches your profile." She found she was clenching her hand, and she slowly uncurled her fingers. She had forgotten - it was all fun and games fueling people's paranoia until she found it directed at her. And with good reason, she had to concede, although it didn't lessen the anger that she had been duped, it was clear, into coming to this meeting. They weren't asking for her help as much as they were trying to determine whether she was the culprit. She could sacrifice herself a hundred times over and what they would all remember first was that she was the only agent in Warehouse history, to anyone's knowledge, who had asked to be bronzed; the second thing they remembered was that she had been one trident-strike away from ending the world as they knew it. She recalled with a clarity that surprised her the last meeting she had had with the regents, their regret at her decision to sever all ties with the Warehouse not quite overriding a sense of relief. And from Mrs. Frederic, who had also been present, there had been only watchfulness, as if she would wait forever, if need be, for the other shoe to drop. Had Mrs. Frederic thought she heard something fall to the floor just now? Helena was tempted to lift one leg and then the other and show her that a sandal remained on each foot. Instead she fixed her with another stare and said, "Yesterday I didn't give a shit about the world and today I'm supposed to be plotting its destruction again?"

"We're all under a cloud, Helena," Myka said gently. "Someone with a knowledge of artefacts is orchestrating this."

That had always been Myka's role. Whenever they had felt that the tortured H.G. Wells, the unstable refugee from the nineteenth century and her own tragic history, was about to make an appearance, Myka would step in to stroke her fevered brow (only metaphorically, of course) and to coax her to rejoin the family. Screw that. "Don't insult me, darling. No one else at this table could do what's apparently being done, not even Claudia."

Seemingly from out of the depths, though she was still sitting next to Myka, came Mrs. Frederic's dry rattle of a laugh. "Then you're in agreement that you're a natural suspect, Helena?"

"Except that I have no motive." Helena paused, knowing that she would regret what she would say next, but it felt so satisfying to indulge her anger, she couldn't resist. It had been so long since anyone or anything had gotten under her skin like this; it was pleasurable, this momentary self-restraint before she let the words fly. She almost wanted to wait another beat or two just to savor the build-up, but as had also been true when she was angry, the need to lash out was overpowering. "I haven't cared enough in ten years to have anything to do with the Warehouse or anyone associated with it, and Claudia can attest to that, not a single acknowledgement of a single e-mail. I have no reason to invite you back into my life, which is exactly what replicating an artefact's power would do. I'm sure you have some dossier on me, a folder probably just like this one." Helena picked hers up and slapped it down on the table. "Money wouldn't be a motivator, nor revenge, nor anything else. You probably know what I had for breakfast last week and whom I've last slept with. You know there's nothing in my life as I live it now that suggests I would do this."

Myka's face hadn't changed at all. Her eyes hadn't flickered or grown large or shut tight, and Myka had never looked away from her either. She had listened to Helena's rant as if she had heard it a thousand times before, and Helena realized with a growing horror that Myka had. Helena would feel attacked, Myka would try to soothe her, she would, in turn, brush off the attempted sympathy with something cutting or contemptuous, and then snarl, for good measure, that she didn't care, about their opinions of her, about what the world at large thought of her. How could she have forgotten so easily? But Myka had expected her, they had all expected her to respond like this. In fact, she could see the smile begin to creep across Myka's face.

Pete, in a gesture reminiscent of his mother, was rubbing his chin. "The shredded wheat, yeah, that was sad, a little bit. I had to skip over that part. But the woman in D.C. you're seeing, she's, like, incredible. Is she the one who's got your number now, H.G.? Cause I could completely understand."

Claudia had never stopped eating her scone during Helena's display of temper and was only now patting away a few lingering crumbs from her face. "You have to admit it was pretty odd timing, your RSVPing Artie's retirement party. Right when all of this crap's going on, and out of everything I'd sent you, that's the thing you responded to? We had to check it out, and, frankly, you're right. We would've checked you out even if you hadn't come to the party. I could count on the fingers of one hand the people who could pull off replicating an artefact's properties, and four of those fingers have your name on them."

"So, did I pass the test?" Helena demanded, angry anew at hearing the tiny tremor in her voice.

"No more than any one of us has," Jane said. "None of us has your capabilities, true, but it doesn't mean that we couldn't be helping out someone who does." The blue eyes weren't unkindly, but Helena half-expected Jane at any moment to tell her to buck up and follow the other children's example. "We would have been more worried if you had laughed off the suspicion or volunteered to submit to a polygraph. Myka said that the more you clawed the dirt and flapped your wings, the less likely you were to be involved."

"Yes, 'mad as a wet hen.' Lovely image, thank you," Helena muttered.

Myka shrugged, still smiling, but there was a wistfulness to it that kept its curve shallow. "Ten years is a long time. Maybe we don't cross your mind, maybe your choosing to come back now is a only coincidence, and you'll leave here happy if you never see any of us again. But I have to believe that whatever's changed, Helena, you wouldn't hurt the Warehouse."

Helena looked at Claudia. "Is it? Is the replication harming the Warehouse?"

"Not directly, but I think it's fair to say that the Warehouse is a little confused. An artefact whose properties can be replicated in a completely unrelated object. It's a violation of everything we know about artefacts and why Warehouses have existed." She sighed and leaned against the back of her chair, tipping it onto its back legs and catching onto the edge of the table for balance. "Yeah, it's a paradox, but not in a fun, there's-a-drinking-game-in-this-somewhere kind of way. The Warehouse doesn't like puzzles. Who knew?"

"Are you all right?"

Claudia grinned. "Great show of indifference there, H.G. Sorry to tell you, but you don't have the not-caring thing down. But to answer your question, yes, I'm fine for now, and so is Mrs. F. But if we can't put a stop to the replication, I can't say what's going to happen."

Helena wasn't sure how she felt, still a little angry, a little ashamed at her outburst, and more than a little alarmed at how quickly she was slipping into old patterns. She also knew that a part of her mind was already working through what would be needed to replicate an artefact's properties. But first things first. "Give Myka the chocolate croissant and then pass me the box," she told Claudia. She held up a warning finger to Myka. "Don't remind me about your no sugar rule, which none of us ever believed anyway, and don't tell me you've already eaten because I know you haven't." Flicking her eyes to Pete and then back to Myka, Helena said, "I remember our road trips, too. You always forgot to eat if you were in a hurry."

For the first time, Myka's smile was the way Helena remembered it, full and warm and teasing, and she hadn't forgotten how the power of it could move through her, banishing whatever dark thoughts had been besetting her - multiple and varied but nonetheless uniform in the weight of their guilt or remorse - but she blinked at how powerful it remained, realizing that her own lips were stretching to accommodate a smile she rarely wore, one that said she was utterly gobsmacked. Clearing her throat and needlessly readjusting her reading glasses, Helena took refuge in her folder. "I'm standing by my suggestion to bring in Homeland Security, but if you're dead set against it, why did you let Artie retire when he did and where, by the way, is Steve? If the situation is as serious as you say, why isn't everyone here who needs to be here?"

Claudia, Myka, and Mrs. Frederic looked at one another, before Claudia answered. "Because it would raise more questions. Hiring goes through the DHS now, and they track how we use staff very, very closely. We have more agents now than the Warehouse has had in decades; it's what allowed us to take Myka out of the field and have her become our new Artie long before we needed a new Artie. It enabled Vanessa to talk Artie into retiring about three years after he should have and five years before he wanted to, and, after an incredibly painful amount of paperwork, it gave us the ability to allow Steve to a take a six-month sabbatical in Nepal. But we don't know who has our new agents' loyalties, the Warehouse or DHS, and there's no way I'm going to have new agents tattling to DHS about our replication problem. If we had postponed Artie's retirement or called Steve back from Nepal, there would have been even more questions." Letting all four legs of her chair touch the floor again, Claudia said, "If we need to, I think we can trust a couple of the newer agents, Travis and Jacqui. Pete's been on a few assignments with Travis and thinks he's solid." Pete dipped his head in agreement. "And Jacqui's our new Myka in training, which is good, because if you decide you're with us in this, H.G., Myka's going to be your partner in the field."

"What?" Helena heard Pete chiming in only a second or two behind her.

Pete had half-risen from his chair, and Jane stared at him until he sat down. Glaring first at his mother and then at Myka, Pete said tightly, "This part we didn't discuss. I thought I would be partnering H.G. Aside from the fact that our son needs one of his parents to be home," he said to Myka, "you haven't been in the field on a regular basis since Drew was born. H.G. hasn't been in the field on a regular basis since she tangoed with Yogi Bear at Yellowstone. Given that we don't even know what we're looking for anymore, it's a recipe for disaster."

"You're our senior training agent. If you're not out there training the newbies, Myka will get calls from the DHS. So, no, you're not going to be H.G.'s partner. Myka goes into the field on quality checks," Claudia said. "You remember, the ones the DHS makes us do now to ensure that people aren't posting shots of us dunking an artefact in goo or blogging about that neat trinket Mr. Jones next door was using to entice all the neighbor ladies into taking their clothes off for him?" At Pete's disgusted expression, she said, "All the DHS requires is that we do them, they don't ask which ones or how often we send her out. Amazingly enough, they don't quality check our quality checks."

"Why do I suspect that avoiding the so-called storm troopers of Homeland Security will be like escaping the Death Star via the trash compactor?" Helena mumbled to herself as she broke off a chunk of the blueberry scone.

Pete gaped at her before turning to Myka. "That was awesome and proof that our little girl's all grown up. But the stuff about you going out into the field with her is not awesome and not what we agreed to when it comes to Drew, and you know it."

"We can talk about that later, Pete, in private," Myka said. "But as for my not being an active field agent for years or Helena not being a field agent, and our not being able to handle ourselves in the field, that's bullshit, and you know it." She pulled a folder out from the middle of her stack. "Claudia and I have already decided on the next replicated artefact we need to track down." She was about to slide the folder in Helena's direction when she stopped. "Helena, we need to know, are you in or not?"

In for what and for how long. What commitment were they asking from her? A week? A month? Longer? She didn't operate like that anymore. Her commitments, such as they were, were well defined and limited. A three-day trip to Los Angeles to appraise Edwardian-era furniture that a director wanted to buy for a study he would never use and a carriage that an agent wanted to restore, the third day of the trip being her own to spend at a beach watching the waves roll in. There was no commitment she had to make other than to give her clients her opinion, and if she picked up some young thing on the beach or in a nightclub later in the evening, no commitment was required then either. On the fourth day, three days ahead of when God had rested from his labors, she would be finished and on a plane to the next appraisal or someone's vacation home in the Caribbean or her loft in New York. It really didn't matter where only that it was different from the last place she had been.

But what they were asking of her now, there really was no end to it. There would always be another artefact, replicated or not. There would be the drudgery of tracking down clues and the grinding irritation of having to cajole, or browbeat, people into revealing what they knew. Thankfully the moments of terror, when the artefacts or the people involved with them turned out to be more dangerous than anyone realized, tended to be short-lived. Helena no longer understood her younger self's enthusiasm for the hunt, especially since the end of it was so rarely happy, but then she didn't much like her younger self anyway, brash and overweening in her pride. She had learned that the Warehouse was no bastion of morality; eerily sentient, it also seemed incapable of, or perhaps uninterested in, passing judgment, allowing villains and monsters into its depths as easily as it did its caretakers and agents. Her second go-around with the Warehouse had been tolerable only because of Myka. Myka hadn't redeemed the Warehouse for her, but she had made Helena believe that, just possibly, it was a little less venal than the world outside it.

Despite the hint of impatience in her voice and the harassed expression that the folders in front of her had brought to her face, as if they were multiplying before her eyes, there was an earnestness to how Myka was looking at her that Helena devoutly wished at that moment she didn't remember. It was the look Myka always gave her before they were about to do something particularly dangerous or ill-advised or both, searching and serious and, worst of all, trusting, trusting that Helena, regardless of their games or arguments or her whole sad history that screamed she couldn't be trusted, would be beside her. She had always been powerless before that look, just as she was now.

"I'm in," she said.

Claudia whooped, Jane looked relieved, and Pete, although his expression was uncharacteristically sour, gave her a thumb's up. Myka simply pushed the folder across the table to her, apparently having expected no other response. Mrs. Frederic shifted in her chair, clasping her hands together on the table, as though only now was the real discussion to begin. "It's all well and good that Helena's agreed to assist us, but I have my own concerns about her fitness as an agent, no matter how temporary her tenure with us is."

"Irene," Jane said, "I thought we had settled this." She said it pleasantly enough, but the schoolmarm's steeliness was evident in her voice.

Mrs. Frederic was unperturbed. "In your mind, perhaps." As Claudia and Myka exchanged worried glances, Mrs. Frederic looked unblinkingly at Helena. "You do remember what you said to the regents when you wished to end all association with the Warehouse?"

"I said many things."

"Not that many," Mrs. Frederic countered. "When one of the regents asked what it was about the incident in Boone that made it the deciding factor, do you remember what you told her?"

Helena crumbled what was left of the scone between her fingers. The meeting with the regents had been in a room in Boone's community center, the one next to the room, ironically enough, where she had taken the same cooking class as Nate. It had been toward the end of winter, March, but in Wisconsin that could still mean below-freezing temperatures and snow storms, and she recalled how stuffy and warm the room had been as they sat, grouped around a small table, snow melt puddling at their feet and coats and scarves draped over empty chairs. All except Mrs. Frederic, who had worn nothing over her mustard-colored suit and whose pumps showed no trace of having crossed icy sidewalks or stepped through slush. Helena had thrown up earlier that morning and was still feeling queasy. She wasn't sure whether it was nerves or if the regrettable night in Nate's bed a few weeks ago - before then they hadn't slept together for months, although Helena had yet to move out - was coming back in the worst possible way to haunt them.

"I told her that I had been having nightmares ever since Myka and Pete had retrieved the jawbone artefact, that I dreamed Adelaide had died," Helena said tonelessly, but her eyes were bright with resentment as she glared at Mrs. Frederic. "I said that the experience had ruined my relationship with Adelaide's father and confirmed my worst fear, that I might lose another child, especially if I retained any connection to the Warehouse. Although I had helped out the Warehouse on a few occasions since that initial visit, hoping that I might be able to reconcile the two halves of my life, I realized that I had to choose between them." She finished grimly, "You know what I chose."

It had all been true, what she had said to the regents. Myka and Pete's coming to Boone had marked the end of her relationship with Nate, but for reasons other than, or at least in addition to, the reason she had given the regents. She had had nightmares of Adelaide dying, but they had little to do with Adelaide herself and even less to do with her having been held hostage in the camping goods store. But the only outright lie she had told the regents was that she had wrestled with cutting all ties to the Warehouse for months; she had known before Pete pulled the SUV out of Nate's driveway their last evening in town that nothing of what she had built, or thought she had built, in Boone would last and that she when left Boone, as she inevitably would, she would need to leave the Warehouse behind her as well.

"Helena," Myka said, her voice soft and apologetic, "I'm so sorry for whatever role we had in how things ended for you in Boone. When we talked afterward, you never said -." She cut herself off. "For what it's worth now, I'm really sorry," she repeated, raising her eyes to Helena's. The look was full of an old misery, and Helena wondered how long Myka had brooded about what happened in Boone, what had been said and not said.

"It was a long time ago," she said more curtly than she had intended. Trying to soften her brusqueness, she said, "Nate married a couple of years after we broke up. By all accounts, Adelaide's mainly, his wife is a wonderful woman and she's been a great mother."

"You still keep in touch with Adelaide then?" Myka asked, a strange smile playing on her lips.

Pete darted a glance at Myka, and the sour expression that had never quite left his face was replaced by something tender and protective, and Helena bridled upon seeing it. She restlessly swept the scone crumbs into a tiny pile with her napkin. "Occasionally. She'll be a sophomore in college this year."

"I'm not finished with that meeting in Boone," Mrs. Frederic said, reclaiming Helena's attention. "There was something more you told the regents. When they asked you if you were sure that there could be no further relationship with the Warehouse."

Helena closed her eyes and leaned her head against the back of her chair. Of course, this was what Mrs. Frederic had been honing in on, tolerating all the mawkishness about Helena's failed relationships with Nate and Adelaide because there was something more telling from that meeting yet to be disclosed. Telling in Mrs. Frederic's mind, yet simply another calculated half-truth in Helena's. She had said what she needed to say to convince the regents that she was serious. Opening her eyes and looking at everyone around the table in turn, she said, "I told them that I wasn't sure, if emotionally, I could cope with the strain and the stress of being involved with the Warehouse anymore, that, at some point, it would demand something from me that I no longer had to give, and I couldn't be responsible for putting an agent at risk because of it."

"Why should I believe that's changed now?" Mrs. Frederic said, her voice, like a needle, pricking at Helena. "How can I be sure, how can anyone of us here be sure that you won't suffer some collapse when you're needed most?"

Helena chewed the inside of her cheek and then forced herself to smile. She was certain it was more grimace than smile. "Admittedly I don't have a very good track record with agents. I've done horrible things to some of them, some in this very room. And when I haven't betrayed them, I've lied to them and manipulated them. But the one thing I've never done to an agent is to abandon him, or her, out of fear. It's a small point of distinction, very small, but -"

"Enough." The word sliced through Helena's confession, startling her. Myka was looking at Mrs. Frederic. "Enough," she repeated quietly. "You're not making the decision about whether Helena's fit enough be in the field with me. None of you are. I'm making it. She's going, and I'll take responsibility for it."

"Very well," Mrs. Frederic said mildly. "You will take responsibility for it, Myka." Rising from her chair, she regarded Helena with what might have been the barest glimmer of an amused smile. "You're carrying a larger burden than most, Agent Wells, you need to shoulder it well." After a twitch at her skirt to straighten it, she was gone, the french doors not having a chance to close in the softest of whispers behind her.

Claudia sucked in a breath and then let it out in a slow exhale. "Well, that last was awkward, but it's over." She kept the serious expression on her face for a second or two before bouncing out of her chair to rush over to Helena and hug her. Helena felt her shoulders being painfully folded together as Claudia squeezed her, shouting over the top of Helena's head, "Welcome back, temporarily unofficially reinstated Agent Wells." She broke the hug, grinning widely. "It's off-book, of course, and we'll have to publicly deny all knowledge of you if anything bad or embarrassing happens, but otherwise you're an agent. Tesla-less and Farnsworth-less but still an agent."

"I'm overwhelmed," Helena said sardonically. "And why will I not have a Tesla or Farnsworth?"

"No one has them anymore. The DHS deemed them to be unsafe technology. We're not absolutely forbidden to use them, but they're all logged and stored away, and I practically have to sign Pete's firstborn over to get one out." Claudia's grin had shrunk, and she ran her fingers through her hair in what Helena suspected was a frequent gesture of frustration when dealing with Homeland Security and, remembering the importunate young assistant who had collared Claudia at the party yesterday, congressional staffers. "Apparently shooting people is preferable to Tesla-ing them, and talking on an encrypted phone I could hack in my sleep is superior to using a Farnsworth. But, hey, who's complaining. You're back, even if it's only for a little while." She wrinkled her forehead in thought. "How long do we have you?"

"It may be overpraised, but one of the pleasures of being self-employed is being your own boss," Helena said, opening the folder that Myka had given her. "I cleared my schedule before I came here. There's nothing I have to return to." She felt the truth of her words echo mockingly within her, as if she were no more than an empty room with a collection of memories like a box of old LPs and some dust mice on the floor.

She heard Pete and Myka talking in low, not entirely friendly, voices near the doors that opened onto the garden. Myka's face had settled into a familiar stubbornness, the arch of her brows flattening into an uncompromising line just above her eyes and her chin lifting, as if it were a finger she could jab in emphasis. "Myka, will you be joining us tonight?" Jane interjected in a voice she must have used countless times to head off fights on the playground, carrying and authoritative, and Pete and Myka both instinctively turned around.

"I already have plans, Jane, but thanks for asking," Myka said, and though Helena assumed that Jane had asked Myka to join them in an attempt to defuse the situation, she noticed the disapproval that flared at Myka's response.

"Boyfriend," Claudia hissed in explanation.

"I'm sorry?" Helena said, not sure she had heard Claudia correctly.

"Myka," Claudia hissed again. "She has a boyfriend. Pete's okay with it, but Jane still struggles."

"Oh," Helena said, feeling that she had gusted the word, as though the heel of someone's palm had been driven into her gut, pushing her breath up and out. She shouldn't have been surprised to hear that Myka was seeing someone but she was. A little shocked, actually. She didn't know what else she had expected, certainly not that Myka, in taking over Artie's job, had also assumed his nearly monastic devotion to the Warehouse. She was a single woman. No, she was a gorgeous single woman who would have her pick of Univille's eligible bachelors, few in number and unprepossessing though they might be. "I'm amazed that she found someone in Univille, but -"

"She doesn't live in Univille," Claudia said. "She and Drew live in Rapid City; she works from home most of the time. To give the DHS their due, they were pretty accommodating, you know, the whole work-life balance thing. She can be soccer mom and Artie all rolled into one. Of course, her house is wired to the rafters, and I think you're automatically electrocuted if you ring the doorbell, but if you want to visit, I'm sure she'll give you the secret password."

Myka had returned to the table and was gathering her folders. The irritation that had been visible as she had argued with Pete was gone, and she seemed completely absorbed as she flipped through each folder before adding it to the stack, frowning in concentration, mouth slightly parted as if she was just seconds away from taking a Twizzler from her secret stash and chewing on it. Helena could imagine the same look on Myka's face as she watched her son play soccer. Yes, the work-life balance, the equal meting out of responsibilties, and Myka being Myka, she would attend to each with the same care. She wouldn't have been one of those children who try to dislodge a playmate from a teeter-totter by ramming her end into the ground; she would have always sought that perfect balance of up and down, never too high and never too low. Adelaide had been like that, too. Why hadn't she seen it earlier. . . . Helena sensed where her thoughts were drifting and was more grateful than startled when Myka suddenly said, "My house," and looked at her. "Tomorrow night. Working dinner at 7. I want to go over the artefact we'll be retrieving. Claudia can give you directions." She slung the folders into the crook of her arm and tucked her keys into her jeans' pocket. "Claud, I'm off to meet with Jacqui. I'll be at the Warehouse if you need me."

Claudia pursed her lips and issued a soft whistle. "Working dinner, and here I thought all the surreptitious meetings we're gonna have to have would take place over tuna fish sandwiches in a parked car in the grocery mart lot. You must still rate."

Helena was recalling one of Myka's previous attempts at cooking, when they had all lived in the B&B. She asked, deadpan. "Will this be what finally kills me?"

"Drew's still alive, so she must not screw up kid's fare too bad. You're probably safe if she sticks with chicken tenders." Claudia gave her a comforting pat. "I've got to go torture somebody at DHS, but you're free to hang around for as long as you want."

The sun room was empty when Claudia left - through the french doors - and Helena slumped against her chair, exhausted. She wanted another shower or a change of clothes; the rush of emotion and memories had left her feeling like she had just rolled out of bed after a weekend bacchanal. Or, far worse, a long snag and bag. She told herself she hadn't come back to help the Warehouse; she hadn't known the Warehouse was in trouble, couldn't have possibly known, because she had made damn sure she stayed far enough away not to sense anything like trouble from it. She had come back because. . . she was running out of other places to go. Her soul, should she have one, wasn't in jeopardy, but she would admit to having lost her bearings. She smiled at the unintended pun. A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step, yes, and so does entering a labyrinth. She still didn't know which she was traveling, only that Myka was at its heart.


	3. Chapter 3

**A/N: Some occasional crude language. Probably a misremembered WH13 plot point or two, but this is all about B&W right?**

She stayed in the car, leaving the engine running, and looked at Myka's house. It was older and less tract-like than she had expected. On the edge of the city, it was off a lane that wound up and down hills before leveling at the top of a ridge that afforded spectacular views of the Black Hills to the west and north. Myka had neighbors but none too near, and the house, a prairie-style ranch, had space to sprawl. Helena eyed first the bottle of wine on the passenger's seat, which was nice enough to present as a gift but not nice enough to upstage the meal, even if it consisted of chicken tenders and oven fries, and then her outfit, assembled from the offerings at the Rapid City Macy's, which, she concluded, were not only marketed to the well-to-do suburban mom - though Rapid City wasn't yet large enough to have spawned any suburbs - but also hellbent on making every woman look like one. Wearing navy blue capris and an off-the-shoulder French-striped sweater, Helena feared she looked like the middle-aged lead from a Nancy Meyers movie. Taking a breath to settle her stomach, which wobbled as if it were thinking of breaking away from her other organs, she shut off the engine and tried to walk to Myka's front door with a confidence that said she did this every day, only to be greeted by chaos as soon as the door opened. A large dog ran across the foyer with something hanging from its mouth, and Drew was in pursuit, shouting "Shep, c'mere!" Myka ushered her in with a lopsided smile. "Wait here while I go kill my dog." Something brown and smelling pungently of soy sauce streaked her shirt and jeans; she looked down at it and grimaced before jogging after her son and their dog.

Soon Helena heard growls erupting from deeper within the house, many of them sounding like they came from Myka. She returned, a raw, well-chewed chicken breast in her hand, Shep trotting complacently behind her, nails clicking on the hardwood floor. He approached Helena curiously, head cocked. She cautiously patted his head as Myka gave him a withering look. "Three obedience schools," she said, "and nothing took. I guess I should be happy he's no longer peeing in the house."

She led Helena through the foyer, which was bordered by a formal dining room on one side and an equally formal living room on the other, both having the funereal stillness of rooms used only on special occasions, and into a large, open area that seemed to extend the width of the house and combined the kitchen, a much more casual eating area, and a family room where Drew was sitting on a rug in front of the tv playing a video game. French doors opened onto the patio, and Helena could see that the table had already been set, had probably been set for hours. To her left, and she would barely need to stretch her arm out to touch it, was an island, crowded with bowls and cutting boards; at its base, the floor was littered with strips of red and green peppers and more chicken. Myka threw away the chicken breast she was carrying, sighed, and with her hands on her hips surveyed the damage. "I'll change, and then I'll try to figure out something for dinner." She pointed to Helena's bottle of wine. "Why don't you open that? There's a corkscrew in the drawer and wine glasses in the cupboard." She gestured vaguely to the cabinets that lined the walls behind them.

The corkscrew was easy enough to find, and Helena eventually located the wine glasses, after a few futile sorties into the cupboards; they were hidden behind a row of children's glasses ringed with various action figures. The popping of the cork caught Drew's attention, and he watched as she poured wine into the glasses. Individually they were familiar, Myka's serious expression and Pete's features, but combined as they were on Drew's face, Helena was struck by their unusual juxtaposition, as if Myka might want to put straws up her nose or Pete might want to watch a documentary on PBS.

"How's math camp?" Helena asked, intensely aware that it had been a long time since she had been around children.

Drew shrugged. "It's okay."

"What do you do in class?" Helena heard herself laugh nervously and cringed. "In my day, we probably would have been chained to our desks and forced to do long division." Wonderful. Could she sound any more ancient and out of touch?

He stared at her blankly. "We play games. They take us on a lot of field trips and stuff, to show us how we use math every day. And we get to build things." He sounded more animated about the last.

A promising trail into eight-year-old boyland. "What are you building?" Helena looked at the mess on and around the island. Surely she could find the broom on her own.

"Nothing yet." He pushed himself off the rug and she was aware of his silent surveillance as she searched what she thought were likely areas where Myka might keep a broom. "It's over here," he said, walking toward a slender cabinet farther along the wall, next to a door that Helena assumed opened to the basement stairs. Shep was a black shadow, albeit a snuffling one, beside him. Drew handed her the broom but held onto the dustpan, and he knelt on the kitchen tile, positioning the dustpan at the end of the projected trajectory of peppers and chicken. He squinted up at her. "We all have to build something by the end of camp. My friend Jacob's going to build a go-cart. Well, him and his dad. My dad said we could do something like that, but Mom said we should think of something more useful."

Of course Myka would take the practical view. Helena swept chicken and peppers into the dustpan, noting how Drew minutely moved the pan to keep to the track of the broom. Helpful, uncomplaining. It was dismaying behavior to see in a child his age. Somewhere in him there had to be a bedrock of resistance to chores and making "useful" things for school projects. "I think a go-cart would be fun." She paused, giving herself a moment to reconsider what she planned to say next, but how else were children to learn unless you put ideas into their heads? "I built a rocket once."

Drew's eyes grew big. "One that went into space?"

Helena nodded, taking the dustpan from him and emptying it into a wastebasket. Myka, returning to the kitchen, said, "And how did that go for you, Helena?"

"Not as well as I had hoped," she grudgingly admitted. Although she was still smelling peppers, she caught the scent of something lighter and sweeter, perfume. Myka was wearing perfume, and she had changed into dress slacks and a long-sleeved blouse. The blouse was pale blue, with a long, open neckline, which closed just above the swell of her breasts. Helena knew she was staring yet her smile couldn't have been less apologetic, and Myka suddenly, clumsily turned away from the smile, almost knocking over her wine glass.

"They're going to build a birdhouse," she said, her words sounding rushed. "I'm fairly confident that Pete can help him build it without injuring himself or Drew, and we can put it up in the yard when it's finished."

Helena's response was to sip her wine. Drew exhaled noisily in what might have been a sigh and slouched back toward the tv.

Transferring bowls and cutting boards from the island to the sink, Myka said, "It's something that can last, something that the birds will use, I hope, and something that's appropriate for a boy his age."

"I'm not objecting, Myka," Helena said, smiling over the rim of her wine glass at her.

"Yes, you are," Myka said. "You're all but screaming it." She bit her lip. "Just say it."

"It's boring, it's safe, and it's probably what every other child will bring to class, either that or a magazine rack. There, I've objected." Helena hesitated, a memory of Adelaide coming to her, asking for her help with an assignment that her art teacher had given the class. "Adelaide had to model something in clay for her art class. The teacher was looking for a pencil holder. Adelaide took a skyscraper to class, and Nate and I were both called in for a heart-to-heart. This is the kind of object lesson I provide when it comes to school projects."

"You didn't rail at the teacher at any point about stunting a child's imagination, did you?" Myka brought a dishrag with her to the island and began wiping down the countertop. As she neared Helena, Helena didn't step out of her way, and Myka halted, exasperation and amusement on her face.

"You always think the worst of me, darling," Helena said silkily. "It is true that, afterward, Nate said he would be the one to handle any further communication with Adelaide's teachers."

More seriously than Helena had anticipated, Myka said, "I never think the worst of you." Her wiping of the countertop became more aimless, and she looked away from Helena toward the patio. "Is it hard to talk about them, Nate and Adelaide?"

She would have to talk to Myka about Boone and especially about Adelaide, but not tonight. "No. Leaving was the right thing to do, but I have fond memories of them both." More about Adelaide than Nate, but Helena couldn't deny that he was a good man, just never the man for her. Noticing that the level of wine in her glass was low, she moved out of Myka's path, with an exaggerated step to the side and a sweep of her hand indicating that cleaning could proceed, which occasioned an eye roll from Myka. She poured more wine into her glass. "What shall we have for dinner now?"

"I'm low on options," Myka said. "It's either mac and cheese or frozen pizza. Your choice." As Drew's head shot up, Myka gave him the kind of stern look that Helena remembered her giving his father many times. "You've already eaten, buddy, remember?" Shep had also raised his head upon seeing Drew's sudden movement, and Myka shook a dishrag-covered finger at him. "As for you, you're just lucky I haven't banished you to the garage."

Shep's woof was equivalent to a shrug of the shoulders, and Helena said into her glass, "I see the exceedingly tight ship you run at home."

"Are you sure you really want to be challenging me?" Myka laughed, reaching for the wine bottle.

"You couldn't force me into the garage," Helena said. "I may finally be showing my age a little, but I can still take you down."

She had meant it as a joke. She had said it as a joke, hadn't she? It hadn't sounded suggestive to her as she said it, but Myka had reddened. "I was talking more about my cooking skills, trying to make something from scratch," Myka said. "You know, being the victim of some impromptu dish gone horribly, horribly wrong. . . although I can make a decent stir-fry, you can't really screw those up. You take a protein, some vegetables, and . . . ." She worried her lip again, seemingly less in frustration than in an attempt to stop rambling. "Let's go with frozen pizza."

They went with frozen pizza, and, as Helena had suspected she would, Myka relented and let her son have a slice. As Drew returned to his video game, slice in hand, Myka also relenting on what was apparently only an irregularly enforced rule about not eating in the family room, they carried their wine glasses, the pizza, and, tucked under Myka's arm, another bottle of wine out onto the patio. The umbrella over the table shaded them from the better part of the evening sun, although it failed to block the rays that seemed to skim the table, in lines more horizontal than diagonal, and which lit the back of Myka's hair.

How many times in the summer, when they stopped for gas or reconnoitered a building or just stood outside the Warehouse, had Helena seen the same transformation of brown into red, the curls seeming to snap in the sun like filaments? She looked away. "What I said earlier today, about not caring about any of you, it wasn't true. I was angry, and I lashed out." She hazarded a glance at Myka, who was regarding her steadily. "One of my many failings. Thankfully I limit that impulse to words these days." The breeze was slight, but it lifted one or two of Myka's curls, and Helena remembered, with more clarity than she wished for at the moment, how often when she had seen the wind play with Myka's hair, she had wanted to twine the curls around her fingers. "There's really nothing I can offer about why I didn't at least send you a line now and then that would make any sense."

Myka dropped her eyes and played with the stem of her wine glass. "You don't have to explain, Helena. It was. . .is a complicated situation. I thought about inviting you to the wedding, you know, but we had already fallen out of touch, and that's what it would have been, the wedding, a Warehouse reunion of sorts. Then Drew and the divorce, it seemed too much to put into a letter or e-mail. Or too little." She smiled faintly before raising her eyes to meet Helena's. "Now I'm overexplaining. I guess I'm saying no one's reading anything into this, your helping us out."

Helena flushed, hoping Myka would attribute the sudden color in her face to the quality of the light or the wine. Apparently she was so faithless a friend that none of them presumed she might be willing to reestablish a connection. Which she wasn't, she reminded herself. She could wince at their easy dismissal of her as anything more than a resource, but she couldn't blame them. She busied herself with her pizza; there was no response she was comfortable giving.

But she had underestimated, or forgotten, Myka's tolerance of the awkward social moment. She had never been consistent in choosing when she would pursue a conversation that seemed destined to plunge into a bog, but once she had made up her mind, she seemed oblivious to whether the waters would close over her head. "Have you been happy?"

Helena tried to take a small bite, but the cheese swept off the side of her slice. Neither alternative, cramming it into or pulling it away from her mouth, like an errantly popped piece of bubble gum, was attractive. Shrugging, she pulled the cheese away from her mouth and set it on her plate, surveying the denuded slice. A metaphor for her own life but no reason for Myka to know that. "Would you settle for content?"

Myka started to shake her head but stopped midway, taking a slice of pizza and pulling the topping away from the crust. She tilted her head back, opened her mouth wide, and pushed all of the cheese and pepperoni in. "No standing on ceremony," she said, her eyes level with Helena's once more, her mouth full.

Helena gave her a look of mock disgust. "You don't have to trample it to death, like your ex-husband." But she began plucking the pepperoni from the cheese on her plate and nibbling on them. "I like what I do, and I have companionship when I want it. I am rather a simple person," she said innocently, "when you get past all the mad genius, diabolical former agent rubbish."

"I've seen pictures of your companionship," Myka said with a wry look. "Is it serious?"

"Only to the extent that we both abhor the thought." Helena grinned as Myka rolled her eyes. "A little bird told me that you've found, ah, companionship as well."

"Thank you, Claudia," Myka muttered. She tore the crust away from her pizza and chewed one end contemplatively. "His name is Jeff, and we've been seeing each other for a few months." Holding the bottle of wine up, she tipped it in Helena's direction; at Helena's nod, Myka pulled the cork and poured a large amount into her glass.

As Myka poured even more wine into her own glass, Helena tried to remember the last time they had talked about men or relationships in general, with or without the assistance of alcohol. She couldn't; they had never girl-talked about relationships. Myka had told her about Sam, but that had been part of a more far-reaching conversation about coping (or, in Helena's case, failing to cope) with loss. As for Helena, she had never had a relationship of sufficient longevity, including her liaison with Christina's father, to merit discussion. Her one sustained attempt, with Nate, had come too late to share with Myka, had she even been so inclined, and turned into such a royal cock-up that she sometimes liked to believe it had been artefact-induced. How else could a single flirtatious battle conducted with wooden spoons during cooking class become an invitation to move in less than three months later? He had been attractive and personable enough and she had been lonely, but she had raised a higher bar for one-night stands.

"You're 'seeing him.' That sounds awfully casual for you," Helena observed, wondering why she was pumping Myka for more information. It couldn't possibly matter to her, other than in that vague way one always wished, or always pretended to wish, that a friend's new relationship would be a good one for her. By the time Myka reasoned her way to deepening things with Jeff or ending them, Helena would be long gone.

"It's still pretty new," Myka said. "And it's different now, dating, with Drew. Whatever happens, I have to protect him."

Helena knew that Myka hadn't meant to draw any parallel, but it was there. She had known Adelaide for less than two months when she had moved into Nate's house. The relationship with Nate had progressed quickly, not in a starry-eyed, head-over-heels way but in a manner that, on the surface, seemed more sane, a comfortable and comforting meshing of likes and dislikes, a mutual unspoken acknowledgement that loneliness should be counted among the seven deadly sins, and which had felt so easy, so unthreatening that Helena hadn't been put off by the fact that Nate had only casually suggested it, as he might a weekend getaway to wine country or Las Vegas. She recalled him shouting it to her while she was in the bathroom brushing her teeth. And she had just as casually accepted it, throwing her few possessions in a couple of moving boxes the following weekend.

"I'm sorry. I didn't mean to suggest that you, that you and Nate were. . . ." Myka studied her wine as she stumbled over her words.

"Careless?" Helena supplied. "We were. We hurt Adelaide. It was the last thing I ever wanted to do, to hurt her, but I did." She paused, not wanting to dwell any longer on what happened in Boone. "Besides, darling," she said, deliberately injecting a theatrical archness into her voice, "there's nothing wrong in being with someone just for the sex. I trust that Jeff is more than competent in that regard."

The old Myka would have blushed furiously and sputtered that it was none of Helena's business. This Myka, not in the least flustered, said smoothly, "I don't kiss and tell."

"More's the pity." Helena quirked her lips teasingly. "Brief though my tenure was with Warehouse 13, I always thought you were undersexed."

That did hit its mark. Myka shifted in her chair and gave Helena a narrow-eyed look. "Darling, it was true," Helena exclaimed. "Pete had any number of encounters, shall we say, and that doesn't include Univille's veterinarian at the time. Even Claudia had some mopey teenaged boy trailing after her. But you, you could have been cloistered for all that you were away from the B&B of an evening."

"If I were you, I wouldn't throw stones," Myka said.

"I had other preoccupations," Helena said lightly but feeling her teasing smile grow stiff. "Doing my nails, planning the end of the world, that sort of thing." Boone was a minor embarrassment compared to the consequences of her pre-Yellowstone schemes and machinations. After all, she had only, simply, merely deserted a child in Boone, she hadn't been the agent of her death, not like those poor boys whom she had hired and sent to Egypt. Back then her insomnia had been fueled by the feverishness with which she was carrying out her plans, just tinged with, not steeped in, guilt. She became disquieted only when she would look out the window in the early morning and see Myka beginning her stretches. There was something about the crispness of her movements, her long, lean lines that would make Helena believe she could live in a world like this one, if it had no more than Myka running across the grass, bare legs working like scissors in the sun. She had never known until later, after Yellowstone, after Boone, that insomnia could bear down on one like a stone or that it could be more peopled by chain-dragging ghosts than Dickens had thought to plague his Scrooge with. Hoping her face wasn't betraying the direction her thoughts had taken, she worked her smile into a smirk. "And then once the Janus coin was employed, well, it's so hard to meet people when you're a hologram. Perhaps poor Emily Lake had better luck, although I would think her wardrobe and cat," Helena shuddered, "argue against it."

"How did you meet her?" Myka asked abruptly. "Suzanne, right?" Her narrow-eyed look had continued to narrow, to a particularly skeptical squint, as if she were preparing herself for a story so salacious that it could hardly be believed.

Never let it be said that Helena Wells ever left a woman disappointed. "A couple of years ago at a party a client hosted. I had been in Georgetown to appraise a number of items he and his much younger second wife were hoping to acquire to finish off a Victorian-themed nursery. They invited me to stay for the party, and Suzanne was one of the guests." Helena viewed the remains of the pizza. There were a couple of slices left, but the cheese had cooled and congealed, developing a skin that had the shiny hardness of a scab. "As the folder you have on me would have told you, she's a curator for a privately-funded art museum, the Farraday. My client was a donor. At any rate, we exchanged pleasantries, and thirty minutes later, her hand was up my skirt or mine was up hers, I forget which. We had been looking at my client's collection of early 20th century art. Now that I think about it, it must have been my hand up her skirt because she was the one who came next to the Klimt. Very apropos, but the painting was knocking against the wall so violently I was afraid it was going to drop to the floor." Helena spread her hands wide. "That was how we met."

Myka's eyes closed. "Helena," she murmured.

"You asked, darling." Myka opened one eye at a time, giving her a caustic glance with each. Helena shrugged in response. "I'm sure some of you thought Suzanne and I were in collusion." She tried to keep the tone mocking, but she could hear the anger left over from yesterday's meeting. "Yes, she and I were out to bring the world to its knees through a mass distribution of magicked pocket combs. Though I do have to admit that she would be a perfect co-conspirator. A woman with a large network of wealthy patrons and donors, many of whom would be willing to pay great sums of money for a new, exclusive entertainment."

"I can't answer for the others," Myka said, "but I've never thought you were involved." She frowned in puzzled contemplation. "It's not a right fit for you, it's too. . . small, somehow. The artefacts that are being copied, what they're being copied to, how many copies there are, it's more mercantile than I would expect of you."

"Thank you, I think," Helena said dryly. "But I'm not above wanting to make lots of money, Myka. It's a large part of why I do what I do now."

Myka began gathering their plates and the leftover pizza. "The last time we spoke, you were working as a quant for a hedge fund in London."

"I was managing quants for a hedge fund in London," Helena corrected her. "The fund prospered, I prospered. I had already moved on by the time the recession really took hold, but our fund did quite well, weathered it far better than most."

"No doubt the result of your superior foresight," Myka said, deadpan.

"Of course," Helena said matter-of-factly, smiling only after a deliberate pause. Myka smiled in response, shaking her head. "The greed and outright chicanery, it wasn't all that different from what you would have seen in the markets at the end of the nineteenth century. But some months before I had been spending time with a client, doing a lot of hand-holding, and he invited me to lunch at his home. He gave me the grand tour, showing off what he thought were some original Charles Voysey pieces." Feeling absurdly antiquated, as she did most times she referred to famous figures, long since dead, whom she had personally known, she said, tipping her wine glass to her mouth, "I knew Voysey and was acquainted with his work, they weren't his. I told the client that, he confirmed it with a more reputable dealer than the one he had bought the furniture from, and, thus, yet another 'new' career for H.G. Wells was born."

"A paramour?" Myka asked, laughing.

Helena choked on her wine. "There were some men whose virtue I refrained from testing, you know. He was one of them. Actually, he built a house in Kent for Charles, not long after I was bronzed." She said the last quietly as she set her glass on the table.

The something laughing and lovely in Myka's eyes quieted as well. "I'm going to take the dishes inside, and then we can get to work on our snag-and-bag. It's still light out, maybe we can work out here?"

"Has Homeland Security bugged your home too?" Helena asked derisively, remembering Claudia's excessive care to ensure their privacy during the meeting.

"I was thinking it was too nice to go in," Myka said, balancing the empty wine bottle on top of her stack. "On the other hand, I don't put anything past the DHS either, not when it comes to the Warehouse."

One in the bank of French doors fronting the patio opened, and Drew stepped out, blinking against the sunlight. "Mom, someone's here." He stood aside as a tall man walked past him, giving Drew an appreciative pat on his shoulder.

"Myka, sorry to barge in, but I was in the area and I've got something of yours I thought you might like back." He said it easily, as though, while he might not be accustomed to being in her home, he was accustomed to being around her. He was rangier than Pete, but there was a quality to how he carried himself that reminded Helena of Pete, or perhaps it was just the fact that he had dark hair. Helena smothered a sigh. Really, couldn't Myka have found a Jeff who didn't at all resemble Pete? Maybe one with dark blond hair or red hair. As he neared them, his eyes flickered over Helena, taking her in with little interest, before focusing on Myka. Well, that was unlike Pete. Helena stretched out her legs, crossing them at the ankle. The silent interplay between the two was interesting, Jeff, a grin spreading across his face, obviously glad to see Myka no matter the excuse, while Myka was uneasily shifting the dishes in her hands, a blush beating up into her cheeks.

"Hi, Jeff, thanks. Um, maybe you can leave it in the kitchen?" Myka still wasn't able to meet his eyes as hers wandered and settled, with relief it seemed, on Helena. "My friend Helena and I were just finishing dinner." She jerked her head with unusual gracelessness toward Jeff. "Helena, this is Jeff, a friend."

Helena smiled a hello, noting as he turned briefly toward her that he was younger than Myka. By several years. Her smile grew wider as she looked at Myka. Myka's blush intensified. Her discomfort wasn't lessened when Jeff said, "I'm pretty sure this is something you don't want Drew to see."

Helena couldn't stop the little laugh that escaped her. "Oh, dear, Myka. He must have one of your unmentionables."

At pains not to scowl, probably ferociously, at her, Myka said with a thinly veiled impatience, "I'm going into the house with Jeff for just a moment. You'll be fine out here?"

"Peachy keen, as they say," Helena said, resting her head against the back of her chair. "You take all the time you need."

She heard them talking in lowered voices, Myka's sounding no less impatient once she was away from Helena. The closing of the door left only the sounds of the breeze ruffling the top of the umbrella and birds crying their evensong to each other. Seeing Jeff hadn't bothered Helena but marking his resemblance to Pete, no matter how superficial, did, and she couldn't blame the sour surging in her abdomen, something that happened more frequently now than it did when she was younger, especially when she felt off-balance, on either the wine or the pizza. How divorced could you truly be if you were dating men who looked like your ex-husband? While her fling with Giselle, a French flight attendant whom she had initially flirted with during a layover in LaGuardia, was clearly some sort of rebound from the mess with Nate and Adelaide, Patrick, the married barrister in London whom she had taken up with after she had relocated there, had been completely unlike Nate, as brooding and biting as the latter had been pleasant and even-tempered. But then she and Nate had been together for less than a year while Myka and Pete had been married for over seven. There was a difference.

Restless, Helena pushed back her chair and walked past the end of the patio. Although the yard sloped down the edge of the ridge, the mown part of it stopped there. Perhaps Myka owned the land beyond the ridge as well, which would make this a fair piece of property she owned, enough land to do things with. Helena blinked, trying to chase the thought away. It didn't matter what Myka did or didn't own, what could or couldn't be done with the land. It wasn't as if Helena was going to be visiting again, once this mission or assignment, whatever you wanted to call it, was done. Trees formed a rough boundary line at the edge of the ridge, some scraggly and bent by the wind, but a few were tall, with generous branches that grew relatively close to the ground. Two of the trees were close together and without giving thought to what she was doing, Helena slipped her sandals off and, placing her arms into the fork of the trunk, hauled herself up, feet trying to grip the bark. If she stood in the center of where the trunk forked, there was a branch she could pull herself up to that should easily bear her weight. There was more inelegant scrabbling than she had anticipated, but soon she was perched on it and peering through the leaves at the view beyond. It, too, was more than she had expected, more compelling, additional ridges undulating toward the larger hills, which looked much closer from here than they had from the road.

She felt movement beneath her and spotted Drew pulling himself up the trunk of the tree. She eyed the branch she was on and moved farther down, slapping the space next to her. "Why don't you sit next to me?"

With an assurance she envied, he walked along the branch, only occasionally touching others near him for balance. He sat down beside her. "What are you doing up here?"

"Taking in the view. What are you doing up here?"

"I don't see many grown-ups climbing trees. I thought you might need help getting down." Pete's smile, no, this one was shyer and the earnestness in the eyes was much too unalloyed by humor to be Pete's. Myka. He was all Myka right now.

She drew in a long and dismayingly unsteady breath. "I was thinking this would be a marvelous tree for a tree house." Surely she hadn't said what she thought she had just said.

"Me too," he said. It was simply an affirmation of her opinion. There was no sudden eagerness in his face, no incipient expectation that she was promising him something. He had said it as if he had climbed this tree a million times and had the thought each time.

She should get down now before she said something they would both end up regretting, and what she was opening her mouth to say was going to be something cautionary and sensible. She was going to say, "Let's get down before your mother starts to worry" or something similar. But her arm, which really should be working with her other arm to keep her on the branch, was beginning to make a sweeping motion, as if preparing to draw a design in the air, and the words she was saying this very minute were not at all about climbing down from the tree. "You could integrate the flooring with the branches and work it all around the tree, I believe. You could put supports there and there," she said pointing. Then she looked up at the branches above them, smaller but still capable of supporting the weight of an eight-year-old boy.

Drew looked up at them too and before she could say anything to stop him, he was climbing farther up the trunk. She heard branches shake and felt a few leaves fly past her before she saw him, several branches above the one she was sitting on, his arm wrapped around a neighboring branch to hold himself steady. "We could have a pirate lookout here," he said excitedly. Now the eagerness in his face was unmistakable. "Maybe Dad and me could build this for my math camp project."

"I thought the project had to be something you could bring to class," Helena reminded him and felt annoyed at having to be an adult.

Drew looked crestfallen but brightened with a thought. "Maybe it's something Dad would help me build once math camp is over."

Helena tried to imagine Pete armed with basic woodworking tools. It was a frightening picture. "Perhaps it's something I can help out your dad with. I've built a few tree houses in my time," she said casually.

Drew appeared to be considering the offer. "You'd help us, really?" He was leaning over far too much for no more support than his little boy arm and the branch around which he had anchored it could provide.

Helena wasn't at all sure she could stop his fall should he slip, let alone catch him. She began to lift herself up, keeping her eyes on his. In the shade of the tree, his eyes were darker and she was looking through them and seeing another pair of eyes, as dark as her own, and she thought she might strangle on the breath in her throat. She hadn't seen Christina this clearly in years. She was looking at Helena the way she always had when she had grown old enough to understand that Mama went away on "assignments," excitement and uncertainty battling for dominance, with excitement almost always winning out. She disliked it when Helena had to leave her, but Mama always brought her back wonderful gifts and even better stories and the promise that someday she too would go away on assignments. And Helena had meant the promise, they would make their own adventures, safaris in Africa and journeys to the temples in India. When Christina was older.

"I promise," she said, her voice thick and foreign to her.

Then there was another voice, Myka's, but it was queer-sounding and unlike her normal voice too. "Why don't the both of you come down?"

Helena waited until Drew had half-slid, half-hopped his way back to the branch she was on, then she slowly climbed down the trunk, feet and hands seeking purchase. There was no graceful dismount; she more or less dropped down from the fork in the trunk, lurching some steps to the side simply to prevent herself from falling. As Helena pulled on her sandals, Drew jumped from the fork, easily sticking his landing and nonchalantly walking toward his mother. She hugged him to her with one arm; he squirmed away, saying "She's going to help me and Dad build a tree house. Did you hear her?"

"Yes, I heard her." Myka hadn't turned to look at her yet, her attention remaining with her son. "What have I told you about getting up in that tree?"

"That I shouldn't do it unless you or Dad are with me," he said unrepentantly. "But she was already in it, doesn't that count?"

"I should think it would," Helena began until, still without looking at her, Myka opened and closed her hand over the back of her shoulder. Helena quieted.

"For tonight, it'll count. But only for tonight." Then laugher began to bubble in Myka's voice. "I know that Helena looks like a grown-up, but she's not." With more firmness, she said, "Why don't you go on in? It's almost time for your bath."

Having achieved victory with the tree-climbing, Drew knew better than to protest the maternal reminder and with only the slump to his shoulders expressing his displeasure at the mention of "bath," he scuffed ahead of them toward the house. Helena started to follow him, but Myka placed her hand on Helena's shoulder, holding her back. Waiting a few seconds until Drew was safely out of earshot, she said, "I don't know which one you thought you were making that promise to, whether it was Christina or Adelaide, but you need to make it right with him and tell him that you're not going to help out with any tree house." She didn't say it unkindly, but there was a hardness to her voice that Helena could feel herself flinching from.

"I have every intention of keeping my promise to Drew," Helena said, glaring at Myka. Irritation and more than a little shame at having been caught overpromising made her stand up straighter, although that still made her three inches shorter than Myka, which meant that she was glaring mainly at Myka's nose. "It's only the big things I can't deliver on, Myka, you should know that." Tipping her head back, she searched Myka's eyes. They were hazel in the waning light, and Helena thought she saw something almost wistful in them before they returned her own glare. "It's not as though we're going to solve the puzzle tomorrow, I'll have time to hire the materials and the workmen and -"

Myka's laugh was so short and bruised-sounding that Helena heard it as a jeer. "He doesn't want you to have it built for him, Helena. He wants you to help build it, with him and Pete." Myka's face relaxed into a smile, and Helena knew she was seeing Pete trying to act as a master carpenter, then the smile faded as she focused on Helena again. "I think my son's starting to like you, Helena, and I won't have you hurt him, not even over something small."

"Like I hurt you," Helena said under her breath, hoping she had said it so softly that Myka hadn't heard her, but the sudden stillness in Myka's face told her otherwise.

"Like you hurt all of us, me, Claudia, Steve, Pete, Artie," Myka said, answering the remark and deflecting its more personal thrust at the same time.

Helena let it pass. She wasn't entirely sober, the evening was wearing on, and they still had the their plans for retrieving the artefact, whatever it was, to go over. But there was one thing they had to, she had to settle now. "I will stay here long enough to help build him a tree house. I built tree houses for myself and Charles when I was a child, and I built much more elaborate ones for Christina. It won't take that long, even with Pete's well-meant bumbling." She turned away from Myka and started toward the house. "You can count on me for that much."

"Damn it, Helena," Myka said softly, lengthening her stride to catch up with her. "Don't go into a sulk on me." Helena tried to pin her with a look, but Myka was laughing again; it was still bruised-sounding but more rueful this time. "Better you want to claw my eyes out than giving me the wounded puppy look."

"Wounded puppy, really?" Helena said. "I think you're mistaking me for Pete, which is even more of an insult."

"Sometimes I think the two of you are more alike than either of you would be willing to admit," Myka said, an odd note creeping into her voice.

"Having rebuked me for promising a tree house to your son, which I fully intended to carry out, and then having compared me to your ex-husband, you owe me a drink. Please tell me we haven't exhausted the supply of alcohol in your home." Helena kept up the tone of mock outrage. They were back to the patio now, the trees were behind them and that wound her promise to Drew had reopened behind them, for the moment, as well.

Myka led her to the pantry, where, from behind a stack of canned peas, she unearthed a bottle of scotch. "Childproofing," she said. "Drew hates peas." As Helena poured a couple of very large, make that giant, fingers into a juice glass and added a few ice cubes, Myka noted wryly that after the scotch was finished, there was only rubbing alcohol, and working for the Warehouse again couldn't be as bad as that. Helena only raised an eyebrow doubtfully in response.

Leaving her to retrieve the information on the artefact, Myka returned with a phone to her ear. Jacqui needed her help with a problem two of the newer agents had called in. Helena waved her away, taking a seat on the sofa in the family room. She sipped her scotch as Drew, done with one of the quickest baths on record and wearing Superman pajamas, plopped in front of the tv and started playing another video game. Shep, also a little damp, his fur occasionally sparkling in the light, stretched out on the rug next to him. Kicking off her sandals and curling her feet under her, Helena watched him play. The game was a car race, and Drew drove his car with a methodical precision that ensured he would place well but never win. Helena sighed, a little too loudly, because Drew paused the action to turn around and look at her.

"Would you like to play?" He asked, and Helena, who had intended to shake her head no because so far her interactions with Drew were seeming only to upset his mother, found herself sliding off the couch and taking a seat on Drew's Shep-free side. He passed her another controller and, as she briefly studied the device, he relaunched the game.

She chose a silver Ferrari, which appeared to meet with his approval, and as a surprisingly realistic-sounding starter pistol fired, she put her car into gear. For a few laps around the track, she let him set the pace and then tried to pass him on the next lap. He blocked her adroitly enough and she let the Ferrari hang back. She tried another pass on the following lap, at the same speed and from roughly the same position, and he succeeded in blocking her again. A few laps later, she increased her speed until she was right behind him and she feinted passing several times and each time he responded. From the relaxed set of his shoulders, she could tell that he felt he knew enough about her strategy, such as it was, that he didn't need to worry about her. Other cars in the game began to bunch around them in a pack, and as Drew let his car drift toward the wall, Helena spied a narrow gap between his car and a blue Lamborghini. She punched the controller, increasing her car's speed and plunged through the gap, clipping the back end of Drew's car and sending him careening toward the wall and spinning the Lamborghini into the center grass.

"Hey!" Drew shouted, as Helena took the lead and his own car scraped the wall. "That wasn't fair!"

"Of course it was fair, darling. It just wasn't nice." She looked at him curiously. "Don't you play this way with your friends?"

"Well, yeah," he grumbled, scowling at her. "But when I play with Mom or Dad, they don't -"

"They let you win," she cut in. She suppressed another sigh, looking at him. With a mother who only colored within the lines and, let's face it, a father who barely knew how to hold a crayon at times, Drew was severely disadvantaged. "You know life isn't like that, fair. And it's not just a matter of learning the rules of the game, Andrew. You have to learn how to bend them, to make them work for you."

He paid attention only to the fact that she hadn't called him Drew. "Only my mom calls me Andrew," he said, looking mutinously at her.

"That's the thing about grown-ups. They can call you whatever they want, and they can do whatever they want. Your parents are doing you no favors by letting you beat them all the time," she finished sternly. She had never been so indulgent with Christina. When Christina had insisted upon playing chess with her, Helena had shown her no mercy, only showing her the errors in her play once the game was over. But Christina had never thrown tantrums or upended the chessboard in frustration, she had simply lined up her pieces and, with a determination that had simultaneously tugged at Helena's heart and increased her admiration of her daughter's resolve, nodded her readiness for another game.

She waited to see how Drew would react. He set his mouth grimly and started the game over. "I'm not going to take it easy on you either."

Biting back her smile, Helena waited for the sound of the starter pistol. The races became less like races and more like stock car derbies as she and Drew banged each other's car around the track. Frequently Helena won, but not all the time, as the blue Lamborghini more than once sent her Ferrari into the wall or left her spinning in the middle of the track, taking out several other cars. She began to suspect that the Lamborghini was the game-maker's version of the house rules, the guarantee that the player was always at a disadvantage and the enticement for him to return to the game again and again. Eventually Drew became more interested in watching Helena battle it out with the Lamborghini, setting aside his controller and offering suggestions as she chased the Lamborghini around and around the track. After taking a long drink of her scotch, Helena set her controller down and motioned imperiously in the air. "Where's the programming for this game?"

Drew shrugged and gestured toward the console. "Maybe there, maybe in the disc. I don't know."

Helena crawled toward the tv and looked at the cable assembly connecting the console to it. Mumbling to herself she began to unscrew some of the cables. "If you ever find yourself at an impasse, young Andrew, as I seem to have found myself with that nefarious Lamborghini, don't give up." She hadn't noticed before how much like a cheap stage actor she could sound in her cups. Or like her grandfather. He had been known to bellow any number of Shakespearean soliloquies following a few after-dinner brandies. "Everyone can get out of her own Kobayashi Maru if she's willing to rethink the rules. And by the way, my mentor Caturanga had discovered that principle long before _Star Trek_." She began to crawl backward from the tv, the console still attached by a cable or two, before Drew, who had been on his stomach next to her, suddenly shot to his feet. "Oh, dear," Helena murmured.

"Drew, you were supposed to go to bed after your bath. Go, now." There was no indulgence in Myka's tone, and as Helena took in her eye-level view of Myka's feet, which, for feet, were really quite nice, somewhat on the long side but neither too narrow nor too wide, she heard two other sets of feet scampering from the family room and a woof issuing from the opposite side of the kitchen.

Helena sat up and placed the console next to her. Her gaze lifted as far as Myka's knees, which were clad in yoga pants. One of the legs in the yoga pants nudged the console closer to the tv. Then, as Myka bent to deposit a stack of folders on the sofa, Helena saw that she was wearing a simple scoop-necked top. "Is this a sleepover? Because I didn't bring the right clothes."

"It's turned into one because you're not sober enough to drive back to Univille, and I'm probably not going to be sober enough to take you. When we're done, you can crash in the guest room." Myka ran her hand through her hair, tugging at it. In the same brusque tone she had been using since she entered the family room, she said, "I need to go say goodnight to Drew. You can get started on the folders."

"Well, since I'm staying over, I'll just refresh my drink," Helena said, pleased she was pushing herself from the floor without stumbling.

"I should just turn myself into social services now," Myka muttered.

"I thought it was the Department of Homeland Security," Helena said. At Myka's glare, she said hastily, "Just joking." Pulling at her wrinkled sweater, she added, "Myka, what eight-year-old boy pays attention to bedtime? Had I known you feared I would be the instigator of his descent into juvenile delinquency, I would have stayed out on the patio."

"Believe it or not, he's always gone to bed after his bath, without my nagging him. I know it's weird, but it's Drew. But you come here and Shep steals a chicken breast, which he's not done before, I drink more wine than I've had in months, Jeff drops by, which is completely new, and with my bra sticking out of his back pocket no less, I find you and my son at the top of a tree -"

"It wasn't really the top," Helena interjected.

Another glare. "I'm the one speaking here," Myka said. "And then, then when I finally think things are settling down, I come out and I find you using a video game to give an _Art of War_ lesson to a child. My child. My eight-year-old child, who thinks that the Fortress of Solitude is a place he can visit."

"If it makes you feel better, I'll let you -"

"What?" Myka interrupted, taking Helena's glass with her as she stomped to the kitchen. She rinsed it out and poured more scotch into it. "You'll let me kick your ass to Univille? We have to work together for the next several days, God, maybe weeks."

"I was thinking of something that might really hurt me, darling, like you making me dinner from scratch," Helena said mildly. She had followed Myka into the kitchen and opened the door to the freezer compartment. She dug out a couple of ice cubes and put them into the glass.

Myka watched her. "It always becomes a circus when you're around," she said helplessly.

"Stop pretending you hate it," Helena said, as Myka handed her the glass. "I bring the chaos and you find the order in it. It's how we work." She made the mistake of looking at Myka's eyes, more green now than hazel in the light. "I've missed it."

"So have I," Myka said, and, then, as if to stop herself from saying anything more, she spun on her heel and marched off toward her son's bedroom.

Sprawled out on the sofa, a pillow behind her neck, Helena was leafing through the folders, when Myka lowered herself to the floor next to her, a glass of iced tea in one hand. Iced tea smelling strongly of scotch. "It'll hardly act as a counteragent laced with booze, darling," Helena observed.

"Shut up and hand me a folder," Myka said. Taking the folder Helena offered her, Myka added, "Drew wants you to stay for breakfast. He said he would share his Cap'n Crunch with you."

"Cap'n Crunch?" Helena said slyly. "Isn't that corn syrup held together by a few grams of, I do believe it's corn? Oh, how the mighty have fallen."

"One box. And once he's eaten it, no more for several months. He's doing you quite the honor." Myka grumbled. "I suppose you made Christina clean her plate once she had received her daily dose of 'nature red in tooth and claw.' Children's boot camp provided by H.G. Wells."

"Hardly, darling. It was nineteenth century Britain. Mutton and porridge. Porridge and mutton. I couldn't even stomach it." Helena opened another folder. "And before you ask, Tennyson was a little too much before my time. I drew the line at octogenarians." She scanned the first page of the folder, then closed it. "Pete and another agent retrieved the 'lucky' dice of Nick Davalos, also known as 'Nick the Greek,' a couple of months ago from the home of an investment banker who had committed suicide."

"Stewart Afton," Myka supplied. "He was using the dice to make unsound investments with a number of pension funds he was managing. Initially the investments paid off, that's why the dice are lucky. But as happened to Nick, Stewart's luck changed, and the funds lost money. He ended up bankrupting one fund. We think that's why he killed himself, the firm was under SEC investigation, and he was about to be exposed."

"And you've seen things since then that would indicate the properties of the dice were replicated."

"I asked Jacqui and Claudia to keep an eye on the firm. The SEC closed their investigation after Stewart Afton's suicide, thinking the problem was limited to him. But a couple of other fund managers have been enjoying a string of successes lately, and these have been high-risk investments."

Helena opened the folder again, squinting at the print. She should have thought to bring her reading glasses. "It doesn't have to be a replicated artefact. Just because an investment is high-risk doesn't necessarily mean that it's a bad investment, if the investor is sufficiently knowledgeable about the risks and takes the proper precautions. Maybe there's nothing more here than a couple of fund managers enjoying the fruits of their due diligence, or a run of luck. It happens."

"Thank you, Suze Orman," Myka said, turning her head to look up at Helena and flashing her a sardonic smile. "If you had actually read beyond the first few pages, you would have learned that Pete and Travis interviewed those two fund managers when they were retrieving the dice. They were friends of Stewart Afton."

"Reading beyond the first page is what I let others do," Helena said dismissively. Seeing that Myka remained thoroughly unimpressed, she said, "You want to go in now because we're at or nearing the two month anniversary of Afton's death, which is also when you think the additional side effects of the replicated artefacts begin to appear. If these two friends acquired copies of the dice from him or whomever Afton himself obtained the dice from, they could be at risk." At Myka's nod, Helena said, "So what's our plan? What's our cover story?"

Myka squirmed a little and took a drink of iced tea. "That's where working for the DHS has made things difficult. They don't like cover stories. When Pete and I were still in the field together, they never liked our flashing our Secret Service IDs whenever we thought throwing some weight around was necessary. We're supposed to say that we're investigating a potential terroristic threat and leave it at that."

"And people just open up then?" Helena demanded sarcastically. Myka lifted her shoulders and let them drop, expressing her opinion. "Obviously something like that will never work, if only because no one would take us seriously for saying something like 'terroristic.'" As Myka began to protest, Helena said, "Yes, darling, I know it's a real word, but that doesn't make it any less of a crime. We'll have to have a cover story." She moved her lips from one side to another as she thought. "Nothing's coming to me right now. Where's the folder on Mr. Afton's friends?" Myka pulled it out from under a pile of folders that Helena had discarded next to her on the sofa and gave it to her. "I promise I shall read this with care." Helena waggled the folder for emphasis. Myka again looked unimpressed.

Helena put the folder down as Myka quickly and with little effort raised herself to her feet. Were she to try to move from her position on the sofa with the same speed, Helena knew she would land face first on the floor. "Let me show you the guest room," Myka said.

"If you don't mind," Helena said, "I'd prefer to stay out here and let the television put me to sleep." Unlikely though the possibility was. Myka's expression softened, but she didn't say anything as she handed the remote to Helena. "However, if you could give me a toothbrush, I'd be most grateful."

Their goodnights were quiet and summarily dispensed with. As Helena should have guessed, Myka not only had spare toothbrushes but travel-sized tubes of toothpaste as well. She settled back onto the couch and found a movie channel playing old Laurel & Hardy shorts. If Myka was lean Stan Laurel with his diffident common sense that made her . . . . Her mother's side of the family had tended to gain weight later in life and not a few of the women developed tiny bottle-brush mustaches. God knows she already had the bluster down pat.

She must have fallen asleep at some point because a noise or maybe just the sense that someone was looking at her jerked her awake. She pushed herself up to a sitting position, blearily seeing Myka standing where the kitchen and family room met. A few lights in the kitchen had been left on at their lowest setting to serve as an ad-hoc night light, and they limned Myka's figure. Helena became very aware that Myka was wearing a thin sleepshirt, nothing more. Her face was in shadow, but Helena knew those hazel-green, green-hazel eyes were watching her, had been watching her, as she slept.

"Mrs. Robinson, are you trying to seduce me?" Helena croaked.

"That's a misquote, Helena. It's 'Mrs. Robinson, you're trying to seduce me,'" Myka said, amused.

"I knew that, darling. I just didn't want to assume." Then, cheekily, "So are you?"

"If I ever want to seduce you, Helena, there won't be any question about it," Myka said, stepping backward into the kitchen. "See you in the morning."

The next time Helena awoke, she again felt eyes watching her, but as she stretched and reluctantly raised her head from her pillow, she saw two sets of eyes, both brown, but one obviously canine. "You snore, like Shep," Drew said gravely.

"Do I now?" Helena asked, sweeping a hand through her hair, touching the corners of her mouth. Drew nodded, out of his Superman pajamas and in cargo shorts and a polo shirt. She hadn't been looking for confirmation, but she should have expected that Drew, like his mother, would be slow to recognize a rhetorical question. She bent to search for her sandals, which only made the pounding in her head worse. "When you get to be my age, Drew, you make a lot of strange sounds in your sleep." Sleep. She had slept, which was unusual. She had slept before her middle-of-the-night exchange with Myka, and she had obviously slept after it. The conversation had happened, hadn't it? She wouldn't have dreamed that she quoted dialog from _The Graduate_. She only remembered the film because she thought Dustin Hoffman was a ninny for preferring Katharine Ross to Anne Bancroft. But why would Myka have gotten up in the middle of the night to watch her sleep? Perhaps Myka believed as Helena sometimes did herself that she existed simply as a figment of someone's imagination or nightmare. Mrs. Frederic's for instance, which would be only fitting.

Aware that Drew was still somberly regarding her, Helena turned to him, sandals dangling from her hand. "Was it a loud, rattling snore like this?" She sharply inhaled before letting her breath out in a snore that sounded like a coffee-maker gasping its last.

Drew laughed and shook his head. "No, not like that."

"It had a whistle to it," Myka said from the kitchen. She came around the island, wearing her summer jogging outfit, tank, shorts, baseball cap. "Long, trailing, with a whistle at the end." She grinned.

"Yeah," Drew said. "It was funny." He ran with Shep toward the table in the eating area and slid onto a chair, a bowl and a box of Cap'n Crunch in front of him.

"No running," Myka said reflexively. She came into the family room with a glass of water and a bottle of aspirin. "You'll be needing this."

Helena took both with an appreciative sigh. "I'll just pop a couple of these, and then I'll be on my way."

Myka cocked her head, her eyes, under the brim of the baseball cap, alight with a challenging glint. "You're having breakfast with Drew, remember? He's been in and out of the family room for the past half-hour waiting for you to wake up."

Helena groaned and shook out some aspirin from the bottle. Ordinarily she would appreciate the view of Myka's long legs, which she had always thought were among her most attractive features, but not this morning. The thought of having to eat a bowl of Cap'n Crunch made both her stomach and the roof of her mouth ache in apprehension. "I'll need a big pot of tea," she said in a low voice. "I suggest you start that now."

Myka flashed her another grin, which, Helena observed, hadn't a glimmer of sympathy to it. After five minutes in the bathroom, which mainly consisted of groaning, splashing her face with water, and more groaning, Helena joined Drew at the table and covered the bottom of her bowl with a single layer of Cap'n Crunch. "You need more than that," Drew said and vigorously shook the box until the mound of cereal was equal with the blue stripe bordering the rim of the bowl.

"Thank you," Helena said faintly.

Drew laid a piece of paper between them on the table, which had a rectangle, clearly drawn with a ruler, that stood in for the tree house. It included two windows in the front and a door. Above it and to the right was a wastebasket-looking thing that Helena could only guess was supposed to be a crow's nest. "A cabin on a pirate ship and a lookout," he announced. "Could we build something like that?"

Helena studied the drawing, noting the differences between the crow's nest and the cabin, but she said nothing. Instead she smiled at him and said, "Yes, I believe we can."

Myka drifted over to inspect the drawing. "Hmmm, didn't see the crow's nest before." She stared at Drew, who guilelessly shrugged. "Where is it going to go?"

"Way up at the top," he enthused.

"I don't think so, buddy. The branches are too small. They couldn't support your weight."

Helena moved the piece of paper closer to her. "Do you have a pen or pencil?" Drew skyrocketed from his chair in search of one, Shep galloping behind him.

"Helena," Myka warned.

"Not at the top but not right next door to the tree house either." With a mock loftiness that Helena figured would still get under Myka's skin, she said, "A child should always have the opportunity to extend his horizons."

"We're talking about a metaphor, Helena. Drew doesn't need to see over the next hill."

"Says you," Helena muttered as Drew returned with a well-chewed pencil. Gingerly taking it from him, she began to add to the drawing, sketching in the tree as she remembered it. "Flexible support," she continued muttering, drawing lines radiating out from the crow's nest, like spokes from the center of a wheel. "Can't put additional stress on the tree. . . don't want the top snapping off in a high wind." She crooked her neck back, certain she could hear the blood drain from Myka's face. She met Myka's wary gaze and said soothingly, "I'll work it out, darling. Don't worry."

"I'm sure you will." Myka put her lips close to Helena's ear. "Because I'm going to be the one who puts you in it during a high wind just to see how you fare."

"I wouldn't have it any other way."

Drew had returned to his chair but was leaning so far over the table to see what Helena was doing with the drawing that his shirt was brushing the top of his cereal bowl and soaking in the milk. As Myka exclaimed, "Drew," Helena asked him, "Might I borrow this for a little while?" At his sober nod, which made her feel that she had just signed a contract bristling with failure to perform penalties, Helena folder the paper into a square and pushed it into a pocket of her capris.

Later, after two changes of Drew's shirt, three cups of tea, more aspirin, and a chase after a romping Shep, who had one of her sandals in his mouth, Helena finally arrived at the door to her car. Myka stood in front of the hood, her arms folded over her chest, a castellan ready to pull up the drawbridge once Helena backed out of the drive.

"Our flight to New York tomorrow morning is at seven," Myka said.

Helena saluted in acknowledgement, but Myka didn't appear to be reassured. "Are you going to warn me one more time about making promises to your son?"

"Do I need to?" Myka asked quietly.

Helena shook her head. She touched the piece of paper in her pocket. When she had looked at the drawing earlier, she had realized that the awkwardly drawn crow's nest was Drew's, but the cabin's straight lines and its windows were Myka's. No eight-year-old boy, not even Drew, would use a ruler and though he might add windows, he wouldn't think to draw them in the shape of a treasure chest. She wasn't promising only Drew, she was promising Myka, but she had always known that, hadn't she? There was no reason for her heart to be beating so fast, so anxiously. It was just a tree house, after all.


	4. Chapter 4

**A/N: Some strong language. Also sometimes I have to remember I have a plot to develop here, when I'd just prefer to stick with the B&W exchanges and maybe the W&D exchanges too. So the plot creaks along. . . .**

She had four hours before she needed to get up for the flight to New York. There was the time she needed to shower, to drive to Rapid City, and then to wait, bored, sleepy, and probably hungover once again, in the gate area until she was allowed to board. But _North by Northwest_ was on, and though she had seen it many times before, she always liked to watch through to the end. She reached for the plastic cup on the nightstand next to her. She had gone to a proper liquor store this time rather than ordering off the room service menu, but she couldn't say that the quality was much better. Most likely because the liquor store was the hotel's supplier, this was Univille, after all. Some part of her was arguing that if she turned off the tv, she might eventually sleep for an hour or two. Another part of her countered that if she turned the tv off, she would be staring into the darkness for the two or three hours it took her to fall asleep. If she had to stare at something, whether or not she ever slept, she would rather stare at beautiful people. So _North by Northwest_ to the bitter end, then.

He was quite beautiful, Cary Grant. She wondered if it had been an effort for him, in his mid-50s, to project such youthfulness, such lightness, to seem years younger than his contemporary, James Mason, and to carry off the illusion that he was the contemporary of Eva Marie Saint, although he was 20 years older. Had it been a matter of discipline, taking the same care he had so obviously applied to his appearance and applying it to his frame of mind? Had he evaluated his emotional equilibrium with the same professional concern he must have brought to watching his weight? They weren't all that dissimilar, the two of them, though she would grant him an edge, albeit a small one, when it came to attractiveness. Both expatriates, both of an ambiguous sexuality (whatever that meant), both caught between two worlds. He would have had to strive for humble beginnings, yet through some combination of persistence, good looks, and luck (the contribution of each to his success unknowable and impossible to replicate), he had thrust himself into a world vastly different from the one he had been born into. He had adopted a new name, a new accent, and an almost constant expression of wry amusement, as if he wasn't sure that the world he now claimed as his own had been worth the abandonment of the other. With the grace and agility of the acrobat he had been, he tried to balance himself between the two, suggesting that the abyss separating them could be bridged. But of the many things she had been, an acrobat wasn't one of them. She didn't know how to walk a high wire, couldn't juggle knives in the air. There had never been comical drops to the floor for her, designed to make the world laugh, only dreadful collapses that had threatened to bring the world tumbling after her.

She wasn't Cary Grant. She was Leo G. Carroll, the elderly Professor, scrambling to keep up with him.

In the glow of the nightstand's light (why was hotel lighting always both too dim and too bright?), she saw the folder she had brought with her from Myka's perched precariously on the corner of the bed. She had actually read it through, which would doubtless stun Myka and had left her feeling only slightly less surprised. The information on Afton's friends had turned out to be more interesting than she had anticipated, resulting in numerous calls to Claudia and extensive log-in time on her own laptop. After much grumbling about "some people's expectations that she would be at their beck and call," which would have made Artie proud had he been there to hear her, Claudia was able to provide the information Helena sought. When Helena had then asked her to print some financial statements for her, adding, as she thought, helpfully, that they should be packaged in a professional style that would be suitable for a presentation, Claudia had let loose a howl of indignation about how "some people needed to realize they weren't ordering around a junior agent but the frakking caretaker." Nevertheless, a portfolio had been produced, which was perched precariously on the opposite corner of the bed.

As she watched Cary Grant sidle up to the windows of Vandamm's Mount Rushmore hideout, which had her simultaneously wishing such a property behind the presidents' heads existed and recalling that, with a generous allowance for exaggeration, Myka could be considered to have a Mount Rushmore-area hideaway, Helena heard a faint noise at the door. She heard it again and realized that it was a very tentative knock. With an exasperated sigh, she rolled off the bed and looked through the peephole.

"You decided to knock this time?" She demanded of Claudia as she opened the door.

Claudia shrugged and stretched out on the other side of the bed, pulling a Tesla from the waistband of her jeans and setting it down on the matching nightstand. "For you."

"I thought I couldn't have one," Helena said, as she joined Claudia on the bed, sending both folders to the floor. At least she would know where they were in the morning.

"You couldn't have one that the DHS knows about. This is my own personal illicit Tesla, and you have to promise not to use it unless you absolutely have to." Her dark eyes narrowed in what Helena supposed she was to assume was a look of great significance. Claudia elaborated. "You and Myka have to be on the verge of dying. That means blood on the floor, H.G."

"All right," Helena sighed.

"Spit and pinky promise," Claudia warned, licking her pinky finger and crooking it toward Helena.

Helena looked with disdain at Claudia's finger. "I'm not Pete. You'll have to be satisfied with my word. I will use the Tesla only as a last resort."

Claudia wiped her finger on her jeans. She pulled the pillows Helena wasn't using from underneath the bedspread and crammed them behind her head. "_North by Northwest_. High-waisted pants, Brylcreemed hair, and some really cheesy Freudian metaphors, like the train going through a tunnel when Cary Grant and Eva Marie Saint are getting it on. Not my groove." She sat up and reached for the remote. "Mind if I change channels?"

Helena drank her wine. "Feel free."

Claudia clicked through a few channels. "You weren't in your room this morning. Your bed wasn't slept in."

"There are so many things I could say to that." Helena arched one eyebrow disapprovingly. "But I'll settle for asking why you were here."

"To let you know that when you and Myka come back from New York, and assuming you haven't solved our problem, you're moving into the B&B. If you're on the Warehouse's dime, excuse me, the DHS's dime, you'll have to leave these palatial digs," Claudia lazily waved an arm at the room, "and rub elbows with us commoners."

"I thought I was on my own dime, which, without going into detail, buys me much more than your dime." Helena held out her almost empty wine bottle toward Claudia. "Drink? There are more plastic cups in the bathroom."

Claudia adjusted her pillows, rolling closer to Helena. "It's too late in the evening or, conversely, too early in the morning for me. But, H.G., really, drinking alone? In this crappy hotel room? It brings you down in my estimation."

"Heartbroken," Helena said offhandedly. "You haven't yet explained to me why I'm being sentenced to the B&B."

"Cause the longer you're here looking like you're sightseeing, and God knows Univille has precious little worth seeing, the more suspicious people are going to become. And then I'm going to get a call from a bureaucrat asking me why you're hanging around a government facility." Claudia wriggled even closer, the side of her head touching Helena's shoulder. "So Jane and I have sold the DHS on the story that you're an efficiency expert we've hired. And how efficient is it if our efficiency expert stays in Univille?" Working her head onto Helena's shoulder, Claudia mused, "They count the number of pencils we buy, but when we say we're hiring a consultant, the sky's the limit. Gotta love the government." She stopped the remote on a channel featuring some sort of reality show, which, being indistinguishable from a hundred other reality shows, confirmed Helena's belief that insanity was not doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result but watching one reality show after another and remaining convinced that everyone was intrinsically interesting. "Soooo," Claudia said, "did you bag Myka your first evening together? Because if you did, then I have to decide whether I'm going to hit you or hug you."

Helena awkwardly drew her head to the side trying to see Claudia's face. It was hard to tell from her voice whether she was joking. "Tell me which one you're leaning toward, and I'll tell you whether I did."

Claudia nudged her in the ribs with an elbow. "Eh, you were probably sacked out on her couch. No way Myka is going to give it up to you on the first night." She shifted, pressing herself tighter into Helena's side. "But she will, if you stick around long enough. She's been waiting for you, H.G. She'd die before she'd admit it, even to herself, but it's true."

Helena wrapped her arm around Claudia. She would lay with Christina like this, reading to her or watching her sleep. Literally a hundred years ago, and she hadn't let a head rest on her shoulder since. Not in this familial way, at any rate. She had forgotten how tactile Claudia was, draping herself over Pete and, at times, Myka, clinging to their backs like a baby monkey, and Claudia was small enough that Pete had sometimes left her on his back when he went into the B&B's kitchen foraging for snacks. Helena had always imagined him feeding her as he searched the cupboards, passing chips and cookies to her over his shoulder.

"You greatly exaggerate the nature of our relationship," Helena said softly into Claudia's hair. "And she has a boyfriend, who rather resembles Pete."

"Just proof that it's going nowhere," Claudia grunted. "Funny, Steve figured it out first, even before they did, but then you couldn't miss it." She scrunched her shoulders together in a tiny shudder, and Helena fought the impulse to stroke her hair and kiss her head, just as she used to do when Christina shivered from the cold or a stray, scary thought. "Boone tore her up, H.G., and then the cancer scare. I told you about that, right?" She took Helena's silence as confirmation. "She was at a really weak point, and Pete was there. That was as far as I ever cared to examine it." She picked at the bedspread. "It was like Greg and Marcia hooking up, not that they had their tongues down each other's throat in front of us or were doing it in the B&B all the time. They were just . . . gone when they had always been around before. They'd come back late at night or at breakfast. Artie didn't care, and Abigail thought it was cute. Even Mrs. F. approved. Steve is so zen, he just thought the world would expand to encompass it. I was the only one who saw how axis-tilting wrong it was."

Claudia was as aggrieved as if she had walked in on Pete and Myka yesterday, and Helena didn't resist the impulse, this time, to kiss the side of her head. Claudia's losses had been as great as her own and even more undeserved. She clung to her Warehouse family still, stubbornly living in the old B&B even in the midst of the "new" one, and it wasn't surprising that she would have seen Pete and Myka's desire to create their own family within the larger one as a betrayal. "They had been friends, close friends, for many years, and partners, of course," Helena attempted gently. "Why Greg and Marcia? Why not Scully and Mulder, or Chandler and Monica?"

"Have you spent the entire ten years watching Netflix?" Claudia cried. "You're sounding less H.G.-like and more like, I dunno, some middle-aged cat lady who spends her nights in front of the tv."

Take away the cat, and Claudia wasn't that far off. Helena was jostled as Claudia suddenly leaned up, propping herself on her elbows. "I used to think there were two things you didn't know shit about, H.G. But maybe there're three. You." She poked Helena in the ribs. "Myka, and now I'm adding family dynamics." Her face taking on a determined cast, she pushed herself to a sitting position, crossing her legs. "I was just a kid when you came to the Warehouse, and I didn't know Myka all that well back then, but even I knew she was practically begging you to make a move on her."

"I'd hardly call some late night conversations about literature a come-on."

"They are in the Mykaverse. And you would have seen it, if you hadn't been so dead set on skewering the world with your trident, like it was a cocktail weenie or something. Pete was her big brother, her safety net, but you, you were trouble, you came in all _Wuthering Heights_-like with your tragic history and that black mane of yours and your brooding. She was gone. All that self-control, all that 'follow the rules' and 'read the manual,' it went out the window." Claudia was smiling, although her voice still sounded plaintive. "How can you not see that you still have that effect on her, even after all this time? No one tells Mrs. F. to essentially shut up, but Myka did, because she thought that Mrs. F. was attacking you."

Helena was remembering Myka saying to her last night that she was a circus, and she shook her head. She wanted to put her hand over Claudia's mouth and push the words back in, not because she believed them but because she was afraid she would want to. "Myka always defends the underdog, and, darling, when it comes to the Warehouse, there is no bigger underdog than I. Or perhaps I mean to say that there is no one more in the doghouse than I. Plus she has that great slavering brute at home, which, now that I think about it, also resembles Pete." At Claudia's look of confusion, Helena spread her hands. "Myka and dogs of any kind, she seems to have a soft spot for them, that's all I'm trying to say. I wouldn't read anything into what she said at the meeting."

"Whatever." Clauda uncrossed her legs and swung them off the side of the bed. She stood, shaking the legs of her jeans until they once more covered the tops of her high-tops. "I love Drew to death, but that marriage never should've happened." Sweeping her hair away from her face, she said, "Myka wanted the divorce, you know."

"Was Pete cheating on her?" Now it was Helena's turn to pluck at the bedspread.

"Not that I know of. They seemed to be getting along fine, and the next thing you know, Pete's back in the B&B, and Myka and Drew are in Rapid City." Claudia hesitated and when Helena stopped her pulling at the bedspread to look up at her, she saw that the eyes - and the expression - were serious, focused, adult. For the first time, Helena began to wonder if the cuddling, the talk about Myka's feelings had been orchestrated, as if Claudia had known what chords to touch in her and had played them, all with the goal of binding her ever more firmly to the job at hand. Her suspicion wasn't lessened by Claudia's next words. "Whatever happens between the two of you, it can't screw up what we're doing here. Stopping the replication, that has to come first."

"Thus the caretaker spoke," and though Helena tried to say it lightly, she couldn't quite keep a note of wounded vanity from her voice.

"I wasn't playing you, H.G.," Claudia said, and Helena wanted to laugh at how their roles had reversed, Claudia was the one explaining something Helena didn't want to hear. "Not completely, anyway. The Warehouse always has to come first for me. But I have missed you like hell. And what I was saying about Myka, all true. She's waiting for you, but you fucked with her, and you can't just charm or win her back. You're going to have to earn her back."

"What happened to 'frak,' darling?" Those were old eyes staring at her, older than Claudia, older than Mrs. Frederic.

"I'm a big girl now, H.G. I can whip out the obscenities when I feel they're needed, and I need you to know that you deeply, deeply messed with her."

"I thought you said I came back for the sake of the Warehouse. Now you're saying I came back for Myka. What if I just came back? And when this little mission is over, I very well may go away again." Helena wasn't angry, but she wanted to push back. The space she created between herself and the Warehouse ten years ago might be arid and desolate, but it was her space nonetheless, and she would determine when she was tired of living in it, not Claudia, not Mrs. Frederic, and not the Warehouse.

"See? That's a perfect example of you not knowing yourself. Myka and the Warehouse, they're one and the same to you." Claudia sucked in her cheeks. "I wish I could love someone that much, but I can't. The Warehouse is my ol' ball and chain." Yet she didn't seem truly regretful. "You don't even realize it, do you? How much you love her." She glanced at the alarm clock on the nightstand and then gave Helena a mock sympathetic grin. "Aw, you're gonna have to get up in a couple of hours. I should let you get some sleep."

"Before you disappear into the ether or whatever it is you do, since you seem to think you know me better than I know myself, tell me why you kept communicating with me, even when I wouldn't respond."

"For one thing, it's called a Mini-Cooper, and it's parked in the lot," Claudia said. "As for the other, I kept at it precisely because you didn't respond. If you had ever once written me back, saying 'Gosh, it's great to hear from you, keep sending the pics,' I would have said, 'Fuck you,' and you wouldn't have heard from me again. Because you would have worked through whatever it is you're working through and come out on the other side and not needed us anymore. We'd be like those people you meet up with at class reunions and are all 'Call me' with and then forget the next day. And if you had ever said, 'Don't send me anything anymore. Don't e-mail me. Don't try to call,' I wouldn't have. Because you would still be so deep in your shit that you weren't ever coming out. But the silence? It meant I had a chance, that you had a chance. Don't go ruining it again, H.G."

Myka was waiting for her at the gate, a small roller at her feet and a frown on her face. "You're late. They're practically ready to shut the door."

A little dismayed by how out of breath she was simply by hurrying through the small, very small, Rapid City airport, Helena made a mental note to increase her exercise regimen before turning a sunny smile on Myka. "But they haven't, so turn that frown upside down and let's go take our seats."

Myka shoved her in the shoulder then, just as she would have Pete in the old days, and took Helena's sunglasses off her face. "Your eyes are bloodshot. You were drinking last night and overslept." She handed back the sunglasses. "Do I need to worry that you're developing a substance abuse problem?"

"The only abuse of concern here is the abuse of my sensibilities by Univille. Darling, it's a wonder that I don't drink more," Helena said, flashing an equally sunny smile at the gate attendant, who was unmoved as she twisted her phone to be read by the scanner. "But if it's of any comfort to you, I intend to remain drink-free on the flight. And just so you know, I misjudged the time it would take to get to the airport, I did not oversleep."

She had been awake when the alarm had rung at 4:00. She hadn't slept once Claudia had left, and getting out of bed, taking a shower, and repacking her few items in her carry-on had seemed efforts she was trying to accomplish underwater, leagues underwater. It had exhausted her lifting her arms to shave, and when she had finally forced herself from the shower, where she had perhaps fallen asleep for a few minutes, and lurched back into the room, she had stood transfixed in front of the mirror that hung slightly aslant on the wall.. Her white streak looked wider or maybe just whiter. Her mother had grayed the same way, first a single streak just past her left temple, then more until, for awhile, she had resembled a lhasa apso. Eventually the color had resolved itself into a white that looked rinsed with steel, rather an imposing color Helena had found and suited to the domestic tyrant her mother had become. She had never thought she resembled her mother other than in her coloring; her features had been her father's. But the older she grew, the more she saw the likeness. She wondered briefly, very briefly, whom Christina would have grown to resemble. Her daughter had shared her dark eyes and hair, but there had been a squareness about her jaw that wasn't from the Wells' side. Perhaps it had come from Christina's father, a quick-witted, ambitious M.P. from Yorkshire, who had had a tangential relationship to an artefact Helena was pursuing. Their affair, if it could be called such, had lasted a few weeks until his engagement to the daughter of a prominent family was announced, and then with no real regret on either side, it had ended. It was futile to imagine whom Christina would have taken after, whose traits she would have exemplified; she had died an eight-year-old girl whose greatest desire had been to live in a large house with her mama and scores of bunny rabbits and kittens. Helena had thrown her towel over the mirror.

Myka led her to their seats. Helena had been used to flying first class for the past several years, but she knew better than to complain as Myka shuffled sideways to the window seat and almost immediately inserted ear buds into her ears. No conversation to pass the time on this flight. Awkwardly extracting the portfolio of financial statements from her satchel, Helena passed it to Myka, who quirked an eyebrow at her and lifted an ear bud away from her ear. "I need you to have a nodding acquaintance with this information by the time of the meeting," Helena said. "It's our cover story."

"It better be good since our meeting's at 3:00. We won't have a lot of time once we land to decide on a plan of action." Myka placed the folder on her lap.

"I moved it to 4:30," Helena said. "I need to go to my loft, and there, in relative comfort and privacy, we can discuss how we're going to approach Mr. Sheffield and Mr. Bergstrom."

"Thanks for letting me know you're taking over," Myka said dryly, reinserting the ear bud but also opening the folder.

"I promised that I would come up with the cover story, and I never fail on the small things," Helena said.

Myka smiled in acknowledgment at the allusion. "Not so small. They're our best chance for finding out more about the new artefacts. We need something to get them to open up." Her smile dipping sardonically, she added, "Something that won't get us arrested."

"Darling, the commissioner of the SEC is one of my clients. Were we to have impersonated investigative staff from his office, I'm confident I could have traded on our relationship to keep you from serving substantial jail time."

"You're such a bullshitter," Myka said, but the smile was in her voice too.

Although it felt like her tray table was wedged against her diaphragm, thanks to the person sitting in the row ahead of her who decided to move his seat back, Helena managed to sleep on the flight to Chicago. She put a pillow behind her neck and stretched her feet around her satchel, but when she woke, her head was on Myka's shoulder. At least there wasn't a wet patch where her cheek was resting, and, other than having her neck craned at a somewhat uncomfortable angle, Myka seemed oblivious to her presence. When Helena lifted her head, muttering an embarrassed "Sorry," Myka opened the portfolio between them and stabbed at a statement. "You need to explain this," she said in utter seriousness.

"I will," Helena said. "Later."

The flight to New York was no less crowded or uncomfortable, but Helena read a book on her laptop to fight off sleep. As she limped up the jetway to the gate, her knees feeling so stiff she feared they might lock, she watched Myka stride springily ahead of her and promised herself that she would fly first class back, happily paying the difference in price herself.

During the cab ride to her home, Helena observed Myka's constant twisting of her head as she tried to take in all the views the cab windows offered. Finally noticing how Helena was watching her with amusement, Myka shrugged and said with an embarrassed grin, "Hey, I'm just a tourist whenever I come here." She practically pressed her nose against the window. "Where are we going?"

"Brooklyn." At Myka's surprised look, Helena said, with mock horror, "Imagine my distress when my agent said he had a loft for me here. The last time I had been in Brooklyn was 1889. If only I had thought to snap up real estate then."

Her loft was in a rather nondescript former warehouse and occupied the entire top floor. Helena felt more than a little trepidation as Myka followed her in. It wasn't that milk was souring in the refrigerator or that weeks-old magazines and newspapers were littering the furniture, Helena was never in the loft frequently enough for either to be a problem. Plus she had a cleaning service that came once a week whether she was there or not. It was that the loft looked so obviously unlived in, so clearly decorated by professionals - so hotel-room like.

"So. . . cavernous," Myka said finally. She flushed. "I'm sorry -"

"Don't apologize," Helena interrupted her. "It's an address, that's its purpose."

Myka had wandered over to the windows that faced the city skyline. She had taken her shoes off at the door, and she was curling her toes into the deep pile of the area rug. Behind her were loveseats and a few chairs, all in the off-white tones that were the dominant color schemes; Helena wasn't terribly fond of white, or any variation thereof. It reminded her of coroners' offices and burial shrouds, and she had seen enough of both. But she had given the designers a free hand, and she didn't care enough about the loft to hire another team to redecorate. That would be tantamount to suggesting that she might make the loft a home.

"Spectacular view," Myka was saying. "You must show it off to all your guests."

"You're my first guest." Myka looked at her disbelievingly. "I don't bring people here," Helena said.

"Not even your girlfriend?"

"She's not my girlfriend." Perhaps because being in the loft always made her irritable, its space, its furnishings, its very whiteness a reproach to her for not living in it, for not putting dimples in the cushions and the occasional mark on the walls, or perhaps because it was Myka who was privy to all that the loft told about her, none of it good, Helena said brusquely, "We fuck, and that's the extent of our relationship. We don't call, we don't text. The only understanding we have is that there is no understanding."

Myka's eyes widened, but she didn't immediately respond. She cocked her head, her gaze measuring Helena and then she smiled in understanding. "You hunt, but you don't bring your prey to your lair. I guess that's one way to conduct your social life."

"It's less messy that way." Helena headed toward a small winding staircase at the side of the room that led to her bedroom on the upper level. "I'm going to take a shower and wash away the stain of air travel. There's water of various kinds in the refrigerator, none past its expiration date, I believe. Help yourself." She saw that Myka had turned back toward the view. "You're welcome to stay here, if you'd like. I have a guest room."

"Thanks, but I'm fine with the place the DHS puts us in midtown. I may take you up on the water, though."

Myka was still in front of the windows when Helena finished her second shower of the day. She held a bottle of water, which she nearly dropped when Helena, leaning over the railing, called to her to come upstairs. Looking down at herself, Helena realized that she was only in a bra and panties. She hadn't given it a thought when she had decided that she wanted Myka's opinion on what to wear to the meeting with Dwight Sheffield and Russ Bergstrom. They had shared hotel rooms and more than once changed together in the car; the B&B, with its shared second floor bathroom, had hardly promoted modesty. "I need your opinion on the least professional outfit I can get away with wearing."

"Least professional?" Myka's voice managed to rise above the muted ringing of the metal staircase under her feet.

"Claudia did give you a copy of the additional information I requested on Sheffield and Bergstrom, did she not?" Helena said from in front of her custom-made wall-length wardrobe.

"Yes, but. . . ." The glance Myka flashed at her skipped over her quickly and landed on the excessively large bed. That also seemed to make her uncomfortable, and she went to stand at the railing, three-quarters turned away from Helena. She tapped it a few times in an uneven rhythm before she let her breath out in a dismayed sigh. "You think the artefact's properties have changed."

"Transmuted, yes, into another form of luck." Helena took a skirt suit from the wardrobe. "I wasn't struck by the type of investments they were having success with, I was struck by the type of clubs they were visiting and how frequently." She held the skirt, which was very short, against her waist. "What do you think of this one, with this blouse?" She reached back into the wardrobe and pulled out a long-sleeved crimson silk blouse with a plunging neckline, holding it against her chest.

Myka's eyes first roamed over her face, lighting on her lips and the fall of her hair against her cheek. Then she appraised the clothing. "That should get their attention," she said quietly.

Helena flung them over the top of one of the wardrobe's open doors. "Three months ago, Dwight Sheffield lived with his wife and three children in Greenwich, Connecticut. Four weeks ago, his wife filed separation papers, and he's living in a Manhattan condo. Three months ago he hadn't visited a single one of the clubs he haunts now. Some I've been to, and others I know of by their reputation. They're meat markets, some a bit more meaty than others, if you get my drift."

"Afton, who had the original artefact, the dice, got lucky, for awhile, with investments. Sheffield has a replicated artefact, and you think he's getting lucky the old-fashioned way. And Bergstrom looks to be doing the same."

"Stands to reason. He's a bachelor, if I remember correctly." Helena was holding up the other skirt against her waist; it was gray, rather than black, and, although longer, it had a side slit that would expose most of her thigh. She also held up another blouse. "What about this, darling?" The blouse didn't button; it had three decorative chains that would loosely close it over her chest. "Too much?"

"It depends on the reaction you're looking for," Myka temporized. "You can't wear a bra with that blouse."

"That's why they invented breast tape," Helena said slyly. "At my age, you can't let the girls run free."

Her glance again sliding away from Helena, Myka sat gingerly on the bed. "What age are you trying to pass for these days?"

"Fortyish." Helena paused. "Do I look older? I've been debating about coloring my hair, but I don't want to look like I upended a coal scuttle over my head." She shivered. "I want to appear as naturally fortyish as a woman who's 148 can be."

"Don't worry," Myka said. "Most people would take you for younger than 'fortyish,' even with the white streak." She leaned back, balancing on her hands. "I'd suggest going with the black suit and red blouse. You don't want Sheffield and Bergstrom too distracted."

"Am I distracting, darling?" Helena grinned as she slipped on the skirt and partially zipped it.

"You don't have to try to vamp them," Myka said, not answering her. "We can come up with another angle."

"You've seen their pictures. Not the most prepossessing of specimens," Helena said dismissively. "They're not likely to give up their artefacts willingly, so I figured one of us needed to set up a honey trap of sorts."

"Helena, you have no idea of the power of the artefacts they have, especially if some of the properties are new." Myka raised one hand to tug at her hair, her forehead crinkling.

"We'll meet with them, show them the financial statements of the 'investors' we represent, and, with any luck, I'll be able to inveigle one of them into taking me out to dinner. While I'm at dinner fending off Mr. Sheffield's or Mr. Bergstrom's advances, you'll be searching his home, his office, wherever we think he might have information on the people behind this." Helena opened one of the drawers in the bureau next to the bed and took out another bra. "You may want to avert your eyes, darling. I'm about to give your modesty another jolt." She began to unhook the bra she was wearing. "Or you can finally give way to the prurience you've denying all these years and take a peek. I won't tell."

Myka rolled her eyes before turning her head to the side. "This isn't wise, Helena. I wouldn't be in a position to help you if something went wrong."

"The worst thing I can think of happening is that I would fall under the influence of the artefact and sleep with him." Helena adjusted her bra. "There," she said with satisfaction, "all tucked in."

Myka looked up. "Jesus, I think pasties show less." She quickly turned her head to the side again, her cheeks pinking.

"They're called plunge bras for a reason. And it wouldn't be the first time that I sacrificed my virtue, what there is of it, on the altar of the Warehouse or country." At Myka's appalled expression, Helena said impatiently, "Not while I was with 13, darling, 12. You know, _Rule Britannia_, God save the queen, and all that rubbish." She walked back to the wardrobe and put on the blouse. "I'm back to being barely respectable."

As Myka slowly and warily pivoted on the bed to face her, Helena was twirling her fingers at her. "Now we have to take care of you."

"Me?"

"I can't have you outshine me," Helena protested, shrugging on the jacket. She heard Myka's snort of derision as she searched the bottom of her wardrobe for the appropriate pair of heels. "Don't tell me that after all these years, you still don't know how stunning you are. You took my breath away the first time I saw you." Shouting it from the bowels of a closet didn't leave her feeling nearly as vulnerable as saying it face to face would have.

Myka, not surprisingly, took it as another joke, another exaggeration. "That explains why you left Pete and me stuck to the ceiling in London," she said wryly.

"I needed time to recover." Helena felt a twinge of disappointment that Myka hadn't taken her seriously. More matter of factly, she said, "You'll need to wash your make-up off, and please tell me that you brought your glasses with you."

"They're in my bag downstairs."

"Good. You'll need to wear them." Moving closer, she stretched out her hand to touch Myka's hair. Myka tilted her head up and looked warily into her eyes. Her heart unaccountably beginning to pound, Helena fingered the strands, lightly pulling on a curl. The very few fantasies of Myka she had ever allowed herself, they had begun like this, her hands in Myka's hair. But the Myka of her fantasies had been swaying toward her, eyes closed, much like the overcome ingenues in old-fashioned romances, Helena realized with a flash of embarrassment, which was not at all what the real Myka was doing. The real Myka was already preparing a skeptical reception for whatever Helena had to suggest next, leaning back more on her hands, eyes narrowing. Myka, at least, recognized that she was on an assignment. This was business. Her hand arrowing straight to her own head once it disentangled from Myka's hair, as if that had been its target all along, Helena said, "You'll need to pull it back, as messily as possible. I have clips, if you need them."

Myka laughed. "If you wanted me to return to my high school days, you should have just told me. Am I playing Betty to your Veronica?"

"Far frumpier than that, darling. You need to be Velma to my Daphne." At Myka's look of surprise, she said, "Those Saturday morning cartoons Pete insisted on watching, a few of them filtered through." Unable to resist the mock dig, she added, "The government-sanctioned slacks and blazer you're wearing aren't quite Velma's turtleneck sweater, but they'll do."

Another roll of the eyes, but Myka rose and washed her face, clipped back her hair, leaving a hank of curls to spill over the clip, and replaced her contacts with her glasses, which were no longer the plastic-frame monstrosities she used to wear. They were smaller, slimmer, squarer, and, in combination with the business suit, gave her the look of an ambitious college intern. Not sexy but impossibly cute. Suppressing a groan, Helena wondered if it would just be easier to put a bag over her head, her own, not Myka's.

Myka completed a sardonic, half-pirouette. "Do I meet with your satisfaction?"

"Always," Helena said as casually as she could.

"You are going to bring Claudia's Tesla with you." Myka used the same tone she might use to remind Drew not to forget his homework.

"Darling, it'll ruin my line." Helena grandly swept her hands down her sides. "Besides, how do you know about it? Claudia acted as though she were being forced to ask me to babysit the Warehouse. 'Call me if it runs a temperature.' 'Don't let it roll off the changing table.'"

"Everyone knows about her secret Tesla." Myka smiled sheepishly. "Plus she told me she was giving it to you. She didn't want you out in the field without any protection."

"I thought you were my protection. I seem to remember a threat about kicking my ass back to Univille. Don't tell me that ass-kicking Myka isn't up to the job."

"If this plan of yours works as you hope, you'll be completely exposed to the artefact. I've already told you I don't like it." With an aggravated sigh that signaled she was conceding the argument before it started, Myka headed toward the staircase with her quick, purposeful strides. "We need to get going. We have to make a stop in midtown first." Slowing at the top of the steps, she said, "About the financial statements of those fake investors we're representing. They look real, Helena."

Helena, trying to insert an earring, focused on the image of Myka in her bureau mirror. "They should. They're mine."

"Jesus, that's what I was afraid of." Myka seemed to fold onto the top step, her shoulders slumping, all her purposefulness fled. "You didn't just manage quants for a hedge fund, did you?"

Helena fumbled the other earring off the top of the bureau. Muttering curses, she bent to pick it up. "At the very start I did. But then I formed a company that manages hedge funds. I still own it, but I'm not actively involved in it."

"None of that's in our dossier on you."

Helena lost the earring again. There was no reason for Myka's reaction to be affecting her, but Myka was making no attempt to hide the pained expression on her face. "Because I didn't want Claudia or anyone, for that matter, to find it. I appraise antiques. That's true, but it's not how I make the majority of my money. If it makes you feel any better, I give most of the money away. You wouldn't know it by looking at this place, but I do. And I took a bath yesterday transferring money into Treasuries and money-market funds."

"Helena, I don't care that you're rich." Under her breath but still audibly, Myka said, "Really rich." She rubbed her chin distractedly. "It bothers me that you're bankrupting yourself to create a workable cover story just like it bothers me that you're willing to let one of these men use an artefact on you.

Helena frowned at herself. The little hook went through the little hole in her earlobe. Why was it proving so difficult? "We need to have a substantial net worth to show for the Sheffields and the Bergstroms of the financial world to give us the time of day. I'm not exhausting my 'fortune,' if you want to call it that. I'm not anticipating that I'll be in Sheffield's or Bergstrom's bed by the end of the night. But we don't have much time, and, strangely, I feel less ridiculous prostituting myself in front of a money manager than I do saying 'terroristic.'"

"A few days ago, you had no interest in helping us. Now you're designating yourself the sacrificial lamb. Why?" Myka pushed herself up from the floor and slowly came to stand behind Helena, who continued jabbing with annoyance at her ear until she felt the earring's hook poke through.

"Darling, before I became completely irredeemable, I didn't ask someone to do something I wasn't willing to do myself. I want you to be able to look your son and your. . . Jeff in the eyes when we return. Think again about those pictures in the folder." She grinned mischievously at Myka in the mirror. "Think about fates worse than death. That's what I'm sparing you." Myka looked at her steadily until Helena turned away from the mirror. "Braggadocio aside, I have complete confidence that you'll figure the replication out, with or without me. I"m the expendable one here."

She thought she saw something flare then in Myka's eyes, not anger exactly, but something as resistant. "You thought that before, Helena, and you were wrong." With an effort, Myka summoned a crooked smile. "Come along, Gypsy Rose Lee, you have a show to put on."


	5. Chapter 5

**A/N: This helps to set up the next chapter, which is a big one for B&W if not, necessarily, for the plot. Because it is a big B&W chapter and because I'm trying to wrap up the first part of my other story, I may be longer than usual in getting this fic updated.**

Maybe it was Myka's reference to Gypsy Rose Lee, but Helena couldn't get the unironic blare of _Night Train _out of her mind as they were led down a corridor, paneled in cherry wood, to Dwight Sheffield's office. She was tempted to swing her hips as she walked, but her outfit didn't need the help, and there was the slight risk she could throw a hip out of joint. Nevertheless the thought must have been parent to an extra suggestiveness to her movements because she thought she heard Myka snicker behind her. Sheffield's assistant, a woman as glossily finished as the suite of rooms the investment firm occupied, stopped them outside his office door with a cool look that turned even frostier when her glance slid over Helena. The assistant disappeared into his office, emerging moments later with a beaming Dwight Sheffield behind her.

Despite her claims about his unattractiveness, Helena acknowledged that he looked much like every other middle-aged male executive, well-groomed and manicured, and while his suit might have been off-the-rack, it was an expensive rack, and the suit had been tailored to give more width to perilously sloped shoulders. The only discordant note was his hair, obviously dyed, the 'chestnut brown' tint showing as a lurid red in the artificial light, a red Helena usually associated with clown wigs and postcards of tropical sunsets. Trying to keep her eyes from continually straying to his hair, she had to remind herself to let her hand remain in his a second or two too long as she introduced herself and Myka. His gaze traveled the length of her neckline, settling between her breasts. Finally raising his eyes to hers, he gave her hand a lingering squeeze before offering Myka a perfunctory greeting.

He showed them to a table, pulling out chairs for the both of them, although he managed to touch the small of Helena's back as she slipped into hers. He took a chair not quite opposite them; he would have an unobscured view of Helena in her very short skirt. Myka's left eyebrow was questioningly arched as she handed Helena the portfolio; she was asking Helena if she was still intending to go through with her plan to entice Sheffield. Helena tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, giving her head a slight toss as did so. Of course, darling. He's putty in my hands. Or that was what Helena hoped she was signaling.

"I was hoping Mr. Bergstrom would be joining us as well. My associate and I represent several investors, and they so value an attention to detail and the personal touch. They believe in fostering very close working relationships." Helena patted the portfolio.

"Unfortunately Russ had an obligation he couldn't get out of this afternoon, but I can assure you that I'm very committed to my clients and always maintain open lines of communication with them. Unless you're representing an army, Ms. Wells, I believe I can perform to their satisfaction." His smile wasn't quite a leer. "But if you would rather reschedule when Russ is available. . . ."

Helena leaned forward in her chair, and Sheffield's eyes obligingly traveled the valley between her breasts. "I don't think that's necessary, Mr. Sheffield. I have hopes that we'll be very satisfied with you." She paused, smiling seductively in turn. "Assuming I recommend to my clients that they move their investments to your firm."

He reached out a hand, the fingernails buffed to a shine, and let it briefly touch hers as he tapped the portfolio. "Well, then, let's see what I can do to convince you to take me on."

Helena let him slide the portfolio out from under her hand. As he began paging through the statements, she looked at Myka, whose eyebrow seemed to be fixed in its questioning arch. Her mouth was too grimly set, and Helena nudged her with the toe of her shoe. Myka gave her a rueful quirk of her lips before she tilted her head to survey the office. Helena had seen nothing of interest during her initial scan when Sheffield had been seating them at the table. Some of the walls were covered with display shelves, which held the usual assortment of diplomas, certificates, and personal items, while others were mounted with the generic photographs of landscapes that seemed to grace (or deface, depending on your point of view) every business office. She hadn't sensed anything unusual from Sheffield either. But it would be unlikely, if his artefact worked as she suspected that it did, for him to bring it here. It wouldn't do to have all the women in the firm lining up outside his door.

"Is that a compass on one of the shelves?" Myka asked, moving her chair back. "It looks like one my brother used to have."

Sheffield glanced at the display shelves. "Feel free to take a look." He smiled apologetically at Helena. "I've been remiss. Would you like a bottled water, soft drinks? I can ask Gina to bring an assortment in."

Myka was at the shelves, reaching for the compass. Helena tensed; she had overlooked it when she had glanced at Sheffield's photos of his family and his few keepsakes. It did look out of place, she had to admit. The metal was tarnished and scratched. It was the kind of cheap metal compass you could still buy for a few dollars at any sportings goods store. Myka had picked up the compass and was turning it over. With a shrug of her shoulders, which Helena interpreted to mean that it was nothing special after all, she put it down. Coolly she said, "Helena and I are fine, thanks. Is that a compass from when you were a Boy Scout, Mr. Sheffield?"

He flipped a statement over, not raising his eyes from the page. "Yeah, how did you know?"

"My brother's always went with him on his troop's camping trips. His is a bit beat-up too." Myka walked back to her chair.

"I keep it around as a reminder never to wander off course." He was responding to Myka's comment, but he had raised his head and was looking at Helena. "Set your sights on what you want and go after it."

He was looking at her in a way, Helena knew, that she was supposed to find magnetic and masterful. Instead she thought he had the overdetermined focus of someone desperately trying not to belch in public. But she couldn't afford not to play along, so she murmured appreciatively, "I share that philosophy," and teased him with another seductive smile.

Moving his chair closer to hers, Sheffield placed the portfolio between them. "These are very conservative investments." The smile had never left his face, but his eyes had a shrewder, more skeptical glint than they had had before, and Helena wondered, not for the first time on an assignment, if she had managed to overtip her hand.

"The recession, understandably, made my clients very cautious. They're only now entertaining the idea of investing their funds in more speculative, but potentially more profitable, ventures. It's something I've been encouraging them to do for years, but they're very conservative in other ways as well. They want the right. . . man to handle their money, and they've asked me to find him." Helena shifted in her chair to press her leg against his. "But before he can prove himself to my clients, he needs to prove himself to me." It was bald, but she couldn't let him start, as he himself had put it, wandering off course and wondering who these women were showing up in his office with an investment portfolio that, with minor adjustments, could have come straight from the 1970s.

Maybe it had been too bald, because he was silent for a moment, staring down at the statements. With the artefact, he wouldn't need, or want, women completely throwing themselves at him. But he hadn't yet moved his leg away from hers. "Perhaps we could talk about this over dinner," he suggested. "I think the type of relationship your clients are looking for should be discussed in a more informal setting. That is, if you and Ms. Bering are agreeable."

On cue, Myka said, "I'm sorry, but I won't be able to join you. I have a prior engagement." It could have been said less stiffly, but Sheffield seemed not to notice. His leg was aggressively pressing against Helena's.

"Then it looks like it's just the two of us, Mr. Sheffield." Mainly because she felt the perverse impulse to tweak Myka, Helena casually rested her hand on Sheffield's forearm, her fingers not quite still, imperceptibly stroking the sleeve of his suit. "What do you recommend?" If her voice had been any more laden with suggestiveness, she wasn't sure she would have been able to drag it from her throat, as rich and heavy as the words sounded to her own ears. For her efforts, she felt a sharp kick in her ankles, but she kept her gaze firmly on Sheffield's face, who, for his part, seemed to have gone into a trance at the question. Blinking rapidly, he named a restaurant that Helena recognized, exclusive and not at all the type of restaurant where an investment banker should be hosting a business dinner.

After asking his assistant to make a reservation for him "and one lovely guest," he showed them to the door, his hand actually moving on Helena's back, rubbing in a rough circle against her spine. She wanted to move away from the caress, but she resisted the impulse and forced herself to give him a slow flutter of her eyelashes as he closed the door behind them. Passing his assistant at her desk, Helena couldn't help but linger until the woman reluctantly swiveled her chair in Helena's direction and then Helena gave her a triumphant smile. Myka chose not to share in the victory, striding down the corridor to the suite's entrance.

"You did lay it on pretty thick at the end," Myka wasted no time in saying once the elevator doors had closed.

"So your kick told me." Helena looked at her with faux innocence. "I was acting my part. I don't know why it disturbed you so."

"What about less is more escapes you, Helena?" Myka demanded. "Sheffield needed to think he couldn't have you without the artefact, and you practically had your skirt hiked up for him on the conference table."

"Interesting that you would describe it so graphically, darling. But sometimes less is, simply, less. I was well aware I was competing against women barely more than a tenth of my age; he needed to know, unmistakably I might add, that I was interested in him. Also, the fact that I appeared to be attracted to him without the assistance of an artefact would be no small sop to his vanity." Myka grudgingly lifted a shoulder in acknowledgment of Helena's counterargument, but her eyebrows were stubbornly drawn in toward the bridge of her nose.

Helena wanted to place her finger on the small creases between Myka's eyebrows and smooth them away. She wasn't sure how convinced she was by her own argument, but it was better than confessing that she had been blatantly flirtatious in part to see what Myka's reaction would be. It was so childish. . . something that Pete might have done. Buttoning the jacket of her suit to close the Grand Canyon view of her chest that her blouse offered and not-so-surreptitiously tugging her skirt down - amazing what a fleeting thought about Myka's claim that she and Pete were more alike than either would be willing to admit did for her desire to appear mature and responsible - Helena asked, "Do we need to find a way into Bergstrom's office?"

Myka shook her head as the elevator doors opened onto the lobby. It was past 5:00, and they had to wind around office workers and their managers rushing to start their commutes home, hierarchies forgotten as administrative assistants cut off their bosses in their hurry to get through the exits first. Leaning close to Helena to ensure that she could be heard above the din of thundering feet and conversations punctuated by shouts of "Have a good night" and "See you tomorrow," Myka said, "I don't think we'll find anything there, if Sheffield's office was any indication. There was nothing in Afton's office when Pete and Travis searched it. Maybe Sheffield will reveal something at dinner tonight." At Helena's laugh, Myka scowled. "That's not what I'm hoping he'll reveal."

"You and me both, darling." The scowl, in combination with the increasingly wild disarray of her hair, which was working out of its clip, and the sadly wrinkled state of her suit, left Helena thinking that Myka no longer looked like a college intern or even the tired Warehouse agent she was as much as she did a disgruntled accountant, as if the most dangerous weapon she could brandish would be the threat of an audit. But Helena wisely kept that thought to herself. Myka didn't like the dinner date as it was, no sense in further annoying her, although Helena instinctively remembered Tamalpais and being pressed against the wall by a very annoyed Agent Bering. There could be a purpose in further annoying Myka, but not here and not now.

"What's your plan for getting into Sheffield's condo?" Helena asked, quashing thoughts of Tamalpais and any other stray thoughts involving Myka and vertical surfaces. Horizontal ones too, for that matter.

"I've asked Jacqui to create a minor security disturbance. She's not Claudia-good, but she's good, and that should allow me to get up to his place. I can handle things from there."

"And you were the one who worried that I would get us arrested. What kind of 'minor security disturbance' is this?"

"The less said about it, the better. Besides, I at least have reliable backup if I get into trouble." Myka swerved to avoid two co-workers who had stopped in the middle of the lobby to check their phones.

Hurrying to catch up with her, Helena said, "So do I." As Myka sent her a withering look over her shoulder, Helena insisted, "I do. Myka, I trust that you'll be there for me if I need you." Of course, she wouldn't be, couldn't be there in time - Sheffield's condo was too far away from the restaurant were something to happen there. But the reality of it didn't matter, what mattered was convincing worried Myka, not logical, cool-headed Myka, who, strangely, seemed to be in a subordinate role right now, that things were going to be all right.

Myka grabbed Helena's arm and guided her out of the path of a determined woman in a pant suit and running shoes, phone to her ear, barreling toward them and the glass doors they were about to push open. "You'll come sweeping in, just like you did now," Helena said as they stepped onto an apron of concrete fronting the sidewalk.

But Myka seemed not to hear her, the muscles at her jaw bulging a little with tension. As another anxious commuter bumped against Helena on her way to the subway station, Helena touched Myka's elbow. "I'm so rarely out among the little people these days. What is a 'rush hour'?" She hoped her imitation of Violet Crawley was adequate; her accent alone should have sold it.

A flicker of a smile appeared on Myka's lips. "I think I prefer the Helena who said television was a greater threat to the world than the nuclear bomb."

"If her invective was no better than that, she isn't worth missing." In a darker tone, Helena said, "Besides, wasn't she the one up in her room polishing her trident?

Myka cocked her head and looked at her for a long moment. "I don't think about tridents or Yellowstone much anymore. You should give it a try." She began drifting toward the curb, looking for a taxi to flag down. Suddenly she spun around, glaring at Helena, her expression fierce. "You call me if anything, and I mean anything, seems off tonight. If he looks at you cross-eyed, call me. Promise me, Helena."

"Scout's honor," she said breezily.

Trying to see Helena though the parade of passers-by on the sidewalk, Myka shouted in protest, "You weren't any kind of scout. I don't consider that officially binding, you know." A cab squealed to a stop at the curb, and with a last warning glare at her, Myka flung herself into the back seat.

Sheffield's assistant had made the reservation for 7:30, and Helena nursed a couple of club sodas in the restaurant's bar as she waited, passing the time looking at her accounts on her phone (she had gladly left the DHS-issued dinosaur in the loft) and tallying just how much money she had lost on creating the cover story she and Myka had used with Sheffield. Not that she cared about the money, but the tallying had absorbed her attention and quieted her nerves. She hadn't wanted to encounter an artefact or its possessor without any sort of defense, but fitting her phone into the tiny clutch purse had been difficult enough; there was no disguising the Tesla.

She sensed the pull of the artefact long before she saw him. It was strong but not overwhelming, which hadn't been her experience with artefacts whose effects were felt by others rather than the artefact holders themselves. As she glimpsed the crown of his head, garishly red even in the dimness of the bar, she found him no more attractive than she had a few hours earlier in his office, what she felt instead was the compulsion to say yes to anything he said. So that was how it worked, and he chose to use the artefact to have sex with women who wouldn't otherwise look twice at him. That wasn't quite true - they would look three or four times at that hair in utter shock before running in the opposite direction. In spite of herself, she was disappointed in his lack of imagination. She was fairly certain if he were to ask her to step in front of a bus, it would be all she could do not to run to the street looking for one. In other hands, an artefact with this power could be incredibly dangerous. That was one of the things they never told you when you came to work for the Warehouse. All you heard about was the endless wonder, they never told you about the endless stupidity of many of the people who ended up with an artefact. Back in the time of 12, there had been the idiot who had Napoleon's tricorne, and what did he use it for, an artefact that would allow him to devise military strategies that would crush opposing armies? He used it to build the unbeatable cricket team. Granted, the smallness of his ambition made it all the easier to take the artefact from him, they hadn't had to wage a war to retrieve it, but it had been galling all the same to walk onto the cricket field and see that fool jauntily wearing the tricorne and exhorting his teammates to carry the battle to their opponents.

- That was the exactly the kind of thinking that had led her down some very dark paths. Suppressing the thought of Napoleon's tricorne as well as a shudder of revulsion at seeing Sheffield cockily approach her, she unbuttoned her suit jacket and slowly crossed one leg over the other. He took in the view appreciatively, a hand brushing lightly against his trouser pocket before coming to rest on his hip. It was an odd little gesture that Helena hadn't seen from him while she and Myka had been in his office.

"Sorry I'm late. Last minute conference call." The hand moved from his hip to help her up from her chair. Helena accepted his assistance, just as slowly uncrossing her legs and rising. "The night's still young, Mr. Sheffield, but you have a lot of persuading to do."

"Dwight," he said. He had begun to guide her in front of him but stopped to reach for the napkin under her glass and wipe his forehead with it. "Damn hot in here." He crumpled it and dropped it on the table. He had made the comment seriously - it had been no heavy-handed compliment - and Helena could see the sheen of sweat on his forehead. She had been comfortably cool in the bar, and she noticed that the compulsion to comply with anything he asked of her had weakened.

"Are you feeling all right? We can do this some other time." She would prefer not to, she would prefer to get this over with tonight, whatever this dinner with him turned into, but he was looking pale. She hadn't been expecting the side effects of the artefact to start making their appearance this soon, but she needn't jump to conclusions either. It had been a warm day, more like July or August than June, and perhaps a stressful one for poor Dwight as well.

"I'm just fine." His hand glided briefly down to his trouser pocket again, and Helena felt such a violent surge of. . . eagerness, not desire, but eagerness to please him that she clenched her hands into fists to keep herself from sinking to the floor and begging him to do whatever he wished with her. Still, she knew the smile she was shining on him was one not normally in her repertoire, giddy and unguarded, and she felt, underneath the pressure to comply with his every wish, a flash of resentment that she was wasting this smile, one she hadn't even remembered she had, on him. "Shall we?" He asked, and the resentment was gone in the breathless "yes" she couldn't hold back.

Thankfully she had been agreeing only to leaving the bar for the main dining room, where they were seated in an intimate alcove set off from the other diners. Occasionally Sheffield would dab at his face with his napkin, but he otherwise made no complaint about the heat. Sometimes he would let his hand drop below the table, and Helena knew he was touching whatever it was in his trouser pocket that was serving as the artefact. She hadn't felt another surge in response to it, for which she was thankful, but she still felt the need to be in perfect unison with him. Which was why she had automatically agreed to a glass of wine, although she was aware that alcohol would only weaken her resistance to the constant impulse to say

"Yes?" At the last minute she had inflected the word, making it into a question rather than a surrender.

Sheffield looked pleased and gave a brief nod to the waiter. What had she said yes to? Some sort of appetizer. "I had been planning to make a pitch to you over dinner about the investments I think your clients should be making, but I find you much too attractive, Helena, to spend our evening discussing start-ups and venture capital. I'm hoping that the attraction isn't one-sided." He smile was too confident, too insincere. He knew what she would say because he had compelled other women to tell him what he wanted to hear. His elbow crooked slightly, and she knew the hand was at his pocket.

"You're not hoping in vain." She would have said something similar, even without the artefact, because she had a script to follow, but with the artefact, she had to say it. She would have said more, along the lines of being willing to leave the restaurant with him now if he wanted to, but she was biting down very hard on the inside of her mouth to prevent those words from tumbling out. Feeling an everpresent push, as if a hand were between her shoulders giving her a shove every few seconds, she thought of other dinners, other men and other women, when the attraction was truly mutual; they had been different than this, surely. She had never felt the wanting was forced, never had to acknowledge that she didn't find the other person terribly attractive, never ended up having sex because there was no other way, it seemed, to end the evening. She had never been that lonely or desperate, had she? And all the smugness and smirking and winking suggestiveness, that couldn't have felt as clumsy and unappealing as it did now. This, with him, it was part of a mission; it was a task, a means to an end. The other. . . maybe there had been an element of marking time, she reluctantly allowed. There had always been in the rote compliments and sly glances a sense that they were going through their paces, she and the man, or woman, across from her, as though there were a certain number of moves that had to be made, certain things said or implied, before they could advance to that next stage, where there didn't have to be any talking at all. And hadn't that had, even at its best, a whiff of something slightly stale? As if they were having sex in a room that hadn't been aired out in a while or on top of a bed made of old clothes.

"You're a thousand miles away, and here I thought you couldn't take your eyes off me," he chided her. His hand hadn't moved, but she felt another sickening surge of the artefact's power. She had displeased him, and she needed to make it right. Her hand shot out to his, and she was saying, what was she saying? That she was so intensely attracted it took her breath away, that she had felt drawn to him from the moment she saw him. Reassured of her interest, he relaxed, and Helena felt the compulsion recede. She sank back against the leather of the booth, fighting against the desire to take a deep breath. Or two.

He looked at her over the rim of his wine glass, and she couldn't force herself to look away. Their waiter quietly appeared at their table and just as discreetly placed the appetizers between them. Helena wondered dismally if Sheffield was going to ask her to feed them to him. As he took his fork and speared a tiny pastry (Helena didn't think she could have borne the absolute cliche the evening would have become had the appetizers been oysters on the half shell), they both noticed the fork wavering in front of his mouth. He managed to steady his hand and he joked, "This is the effect you have on me," but he wasn't smiling. He put down his fork, but the tremor in his hand was still visible.

Helena saw the perspiration at his hairline, and the prickle of foreboding she had felt earlier in the bar grew into a shiver. She wasn't sure how much time he had before the side effect or effects worsened, and she wasn't sure to what extent the artefact would let her resist his displeasure - his momentary pout had had her all but leaping onto his lap -but she needed to say something now. "Dwight, you've been touching an object in your pocket all evening." At his grin, she said as crisply as she could, "It's not that object I'm interested in, I'm interested in the other one, the one Stewart Afton gave you. Maybe it's a key chain or a special coin, but it brings you luck with the ladies, or so you think."

"I don't know what you're talking about." He picked up his napkin and wiped underneath his chin. He looked at the napkin with dismay and flung it on the table. "I thought we were getting along, having a nice dinner. I like you, you seem to like me. That's all there is." The hand was trembling more violently, and he flexed his fingers. "Perhaps we ought to call it a night. I'm not feeling too well, after all."

Pleas for him to forgive her, to ignore what she had just said were bubbling up her throat. Gritting her teeth, she said, "You're not feeling well because whatever it is Mr. Afton gave you has some powerful side effects. They're deadly side effects, Dwight. You need to relinquish that object."

His smile was sarcastic. "Give it to you, maybe? This has all been a set-up, hasn't it? The meeting this afternoon, the investments. And then your associate, with her interest in my compass. You were looking for it then, weren't you?" He began to pull at the collar of his shirt, his breathing becoming more labored. "Stew said we had to be careful. . . not attract attention. . . he said they wouldn't be happy." His muttering became unintelligible, and he unsteadily pushed himself out of the booth. "I need to go home." He swayed, and Helena slid out of the booth to grab his arm. He shook her hand off, taking a step before he fell to his knees.

Helena caught him as he crumpled to the floor. "Someone call 911!" She shouted as the diners closest to them sent her alarmed looks and shoved their chairs away from their tables. As a waiter rushed up to her, she said, "Find out if there's a doctor here." Sheffield was still conscious, but his eyes were unfocused and his breathing was shallow. "You're going to be all right," she said to him as she searched his trouser pocket. As one diner gave her what Helena thought was a suspicious look, she said, "I'm looking for his epi pen." Car keys, spare change, and something else, something oblong and metallic with a rough, knobby inlay. She drew it out, a money clip with an oval of rhinestones down its middle. It was cheap and garish and empty of bills. Slipping it into a pocket of her jacket, she looked at Sheffield; the breathing was raspier and his eyes were closed. "Dwight," she said, leaning over his face, "stay with us here." He gave her no response. Bent over him, she ran her hand along the inside of his suit coat, searching for his phone.

Then a hand was on her shoulder pulling her away from him. He was an older man, with a fringe of hair around his head that did nothing to undermine the look of authority he gave her. "I'm a doctor. Can you tell me what happened?"

Helena, clutching Sheffield's phone to her, rapidly identified the symptoms she had noticed. She had been hoping that once she removed the artefact that Sheffield's condition would improve. But if anything, it had gotten worse. As the doctor examined Sheffield, she reached for her purse in the booth. She needed to call Myka, but the doctor started talking to her, asking her questions about how Sheffield had acted before he collapsed. She tried to be as detailed as possible, glancing all the while at her phone, and then he was standing up, motioning to two paramedics who were loping toward them.

They strapped Sheffield to the stretcher and began wheeling him out of the restaurant. At the ambulance doors, she didn't hesitate to follow the stretcher into the back, saying with firmness, "I'm his wife." One of the paramedics stayed with them, while the other jogged to the front of the rig. As lights flashed and the siren began its loud pulse, Helena watched the paramedic recheck Sheffield's vitals. Sheffield's eyelids fluttered open, and he turned his head toward her. "Dwight, you need to tell me about the money clip."

The paramedic frowned, shooting her a puzzled look. Not sure at all what properties the artefact still possessed or how they might work with her, Helena took a gamble and smiling as sweetly as she could at the paramedic, she said, "Would you humor me by not paying any attention to what we're saying?"

His eyes suddenly glassy, the paramedic only nodded, busying himself with various monitors. Sheffield was moistening his lips and looking around the interior of the ambulance. "Where are we going?" His voice was thready, and drops of sweat were running down his face.

"To a hospital. You're going to be fine, Dwight." Helena had no idea whether he was going to be fine, but she certainly wasn't going to tell him that the recovery rate so far for holders of replicated artefacts was zero. "Dwight, how did you, or Afton, get the money clip?"

"Stew got it for me. Said it would make me lots of money." He swallowed with effort. "Am I going to be okay?" Helena smiled reassuringly. He didn't appear to take comfort in it. "Need to call my wife."

"I will." Helena lightly touched his shoulder as his eyes began to roll back in his head. "Dwight, who sold Afton the clip?"

He didn't answer, and one of the monitors he was attached to began beeping. The paramedic checked the screen and ripped open Sheffield's shirt. He began applying CPR, and Helena looked on helplessly. The technology had changed, but that was all. When she had been younger and before death had touched her irrevocably, the adrenaline of retrieving the artefact had frequently been enough to carry her through this part of the process, when they hadn't been able to arrive in time to save the victims, which had all too frequently included the artefact holders themselves. The gore, the agonized expressions of the dead, she had picked her way through broken bodies and pools of blood and narrowed her field of vision to eliminate all but the artefact itself. She had treated the scenes like dioramas at a museum, exhibits she could linger over, if she wished, but just as easily turn her back on in her search for objects of greater interest. The excitement, the detached curiosity, they had served her well until every dead body was Christina's and every mouth frozen open in shock or fear was silently echoing her screams.

Eventually the paramedic stopped the compressions and looked at the monitor, sharing a look of relief with Helena. "We've got normal rhythm," he said.

At the hospital, Sheffield was rushed into examination, while Helena paced the waiting room, calling Myka. Myka answered before the first ring had ended, but before Helena could tell her what had happened, Myka was asking, anxiously, "Are you all right?" Then her voice grew harder, more demanding. "Tell me you're all right."

"I'm fine, but I'm at the hospital." Hearing Myka's sharp intake of breath, she said rapidly, "It's Sheffield. He started succumbing to the side effects at the restaurant, but I was able to get the artefact." Helena winced at the word, but no one else in the waiting room seemed to be listening; people were on their own phones or listlessly flipping through magazines.

"It's on you? Of course it is, God, you should've had . . . ." Myka trailed off. "Where are you?"

Helena looked around the waiting room, why she was expecting something like a street sign with the hospital's name on it, she didn't know. Tapping the shoulder of the person nearest to her, she asked the woman for the name of the hospital and then relayed it to Myka. After a completely unnecessary caution that she shouldn't go anywhere, Myka hung up, and Helena put her phone into her other jacket pocket, the one not holding the money clip but Sheffield's phone. His wife, he had wanted her to call his wife. She made the call, introducing herself as a business associate, and Sheffield's wife immediately grew suspicious, asking Helena what a 'business associate' of her 'husband' - pronouncing both as if they were dead mice she was being asked to carry - was doing calling her on her husband's phone. Mrs. Sheffield's tone softened as Helena patiently explained the seriousness of the situation to her, and as she began asking Helena if Dwight had asked for her or the children, if he was conscious, Helena felt a resurgence of the helplessness she had felt in the back of the ambulance, and she recognized that she hadn't missed this part of being a Warehouse agent either. On top of the sheer awfulness of having to tell family or friends that their husband or sister or child wasn't coming back, would never be coming back, there was the awkwardness of not being able to tell them why. Even if they were too stunned to actually ask the question, it was on their faces. And Mrs. Sheffield was asking her that question now. "What happened to him?"

And Helena had nothing more to offer than the same mix of facts and half-truths she had offered over a hundred years before. "We were at dinner, and he said he felt ill. Perhaps it was a reaction to something he ate or drank, I don't know. He collapsed and was brought here."

Her regret, at least, was honest, and Mrs. Sheffield seemed to recognize it, thanking Helena for staying with her husband. Helena smiled bitterly at the gratitude. All the better to rifle his pockets, darling. But she wouldn't say that either, of course. The call ended, she dropped the phone in her pocket and dropped herself into an empty seat, waiting for Myka.

It may have been minutes or a half-hour, Helena didn't know. She was alternating between looking at the doors to the emergency room and the doors to the ER's reception area. The doors to the latter opened first, and Myka charged in, head twisting as she searched for Helena. She was in another one of her summer-weight sweaters and jeans, the corner of something purple peeping from one of her back pockets. Helena called to her as she crossed the waiting room, and Myka's wry smile couldn't disguise the relief flooding her face.

"I wasn't sure what to expect. When you said you were all right, I thought, at the very least, there would be bandages and a cast." Myka ran her hand down Helena's forearm, but her eyes were still anxious as they searched Helena's. "You're sure you're okay?"

"Physically yes, emotionally I may be a little worse for wear. I had forgotten what it was like to witness the adverse effect of an artefact." Helena had her head turned over her shoulder, watching the doors to the emergency room as Myka led her toward the women's room.

"Helena, we need to take care of the artefact," Myka said in a low voice.

The restroom was empty, and as Myka tugged a pair of gloves and the bag from the pockets of her jeans, Helena said, with the flippancy that she felt was expected of her, "Darling, we should make sure I've grabbed the right item. I think there's a stall over there we could occupy while we determine whether I can get lucky just by holding a money clip. Don't you feel the least bit inclined to rock my world?"

Myka pulled on the gloves and opened the bag. "You can stop, Helena. I can tell your heart's not in it." She held out her palm, and Helena, with a sigh that sounded more ragged than truly theatrical, placed the money clip in it. They both shielded their faces as Myka dropped the clip in the bag.

The sparks were brighter than Helena had anticipated, and she continued to squint as Myka stripped off her gloves and threw them in the bag as well. Wrapping the bag around the clip, she crammed the small bundle into her jeans pocket. They exited the restroom, and Helena scanned the reception area and the waiting room to see if Sheffield's wife had arrived, but the number of people hadn't changed.

"Have you eaten?" When Helena shook her head, Myka suggested, "Why don't we go to the cafeteria and get something quick?" Helena shook her head again, and Myka, trailing her to a couple of empty chairs against the wall, asked, "If I get you something from the vending machines, will you eat it?"

Helena shrugged in a way that might be interpreted as a yes and shifted her shoulders against the hard plastic, leaning her head against the wall. Ostensibly she and Myka were still here on the off-chance that Sheffield might not slip into a coma and might be willing to tell them more about the clip, but she was here because she wanted to talk to Sheffield's wife. She wanted to tell her that she had been Sheffield's last thought before he lost consciousness. She wanted to tell her that the other women had been meaningless, the product of an artefact, and the artefact itself, his possession of it, anyway, the passing vagary of a middle-aged man. She wanted to tell her to prepare herself because no one had survived the side effects of a replicated artefact. She wanted to tell her. . . . because there had been no one to prepare her, no one to tell her what Christina's last thoughts had been, no one there with her at all. The hotel clerk had given her the telegram, unable to meet her eyes, and she had thought his shifting feet and his inability to look at her just another sign of the infatuation that had been on display all week in his blushes and mumblings whenever she had spoken to him. So she had carelessly unfolded the telegram at the desk, expecting it to be a communication from the Warehouse, and when she had grabbed at her throat, unable to breathe after she had read it, there had been no one in the hotel's lobby to ask if she had received upsetting news, no one to urge her to sit down or to clumsily pat her hand. She had simply torn the telegram into tiny pieces and climbed the stairs to her room, her breath coming in and out in such harsh gulps that she thought her lungs might tear themselves from her chest -

"I hope there's something here you'll like," and Myka placed a handful of candy bars and packages of nuts and crackers in her lap. She handed her a bottled water as well.

"Thank you," Helena said faintly, trying to open the bottle.

Myka took the bottle from her and opened it. "Where were you just now? Were you thinking of Christina? I didn't think about hospitals being. . . I know back then they weren't like what we have now. . . ."

"I'm all right, truly." Helena absently took a drink and set the bottle down. "I confess that I still think of them as pits of vermin and incompetence, but I suppose you can't take all the Victorianism out of the old girl."

"I'll stay," Myka said. "Helena, go back to your loft. It's been a long night for you already." The green eyes were so earnest that Helena began to smile. Myka had always had that effect on her. She could be sunk in the darkest of her thoughts, which, during her sojourn at 13, she frequently had been, and while Myka never really jollied her out of them, in part because Myka wasn't someone who jollied others by nature (that had always been Pete's talent, if you could call it such), the intensity of her sympathy, even when Myka couldn't have known what was prompting it, had nearly always managed to make their weight seem less oppressive.

"I'm staying." She opened a package of crackers and offered them to Myka. "Until I was debronzed, the only part of a hospital I ever saw was the morgue." She hesitated. "You must not have the most pleasant of associations either."

"They're not all unpleasant," Myka said with a smile. "I had Drew in one. And Pete and I have been in and out of them enough times that I don't fear them." She looked more intently at Helena. "You're thinking about what Claudia always calls my 'cancer scare.'" She shook out a few crackers and passed the bag back to Helena. "It didn't amount to much, in the end."

"Of all the times that I never responded to Claudia's e-mails, that's the lapse I regret the most. Even though she told me long after it happened, I should have said something. No need to have caused any of you to add 'heartless' to whatever string of adjectives followed my name." Helena bit off a tiny corner of a cracker and look toward the reception area. No frightened woman with a gray-blond bob was standing at the desk asking about a Dwight Sheffield. She bit off another corner of the cracker.

"I didn't want anyone to know about it. Which was a mistake." Myka blew out a stream of air. "It wasn't fair to burden Pete with all of it. If I had been more open about what was going on, he wouldn't have felt he was on his own, and all that followed with Paracelsus. . . ." She shrugged her shoulders almost moodily.

Helena couldn't help herself; she brushed back a strand of Myka's hair, tucking it in among the other curls. Myka didn't shy away, and she took the bag of crackers from Helena's lap. "I'm sorry you felt that you couldn't tell me. We were still having our virtual coffees back then."

Myka shook out more crackers. "You were still trying to work things out with Nate. I thought Pete and I, no, _I_ had already done enough to screw things up for you on that score."

After giving her a long look, Helena opened one of the candy bars, a Snickers. She broke it in half and handed one end to Myka. "Eat it," she said firmly. "You haven't had anything either." She chewed her half meditatively. This wasn't really the time or place - funny, how many times when she had thoughts about Myka, her immediate reaction was that it wasn't the time or the place - but they were at least talking around Boone, if not about it, and God alone knew how long they were going to be here in this waiting room. "You were right about Nate and Adelaide, about my being with them for the wrong reasons," she said finally. "Perhaps if I had been more honest with you about why I had moved in with Nate, you would have been more honest with me about the cancer."

Myka looked doubtfully at her half of the Snickers bar and placed it, still in its wrapper, on the empty chair beside her. "It's water under the bridge, Helena," she said wearily. "Boone, the cancer. It wasn't my place to tell you whom you could love. You don't owe me any explanations."

Oh, but I do. But Helena had no intention of telling her everything about Boone, only what would confirm the suspicions that she had had. "He was a very kind, very decent man, but I wasn't in love with him, and I don't think he was in love with me. What we had in common was that we both loved Adelaide." She looked at Myka from the corners of her eyes, but Myka's face was expressionless, and she was folding the empty bag of crackers into a small square. "I was used to seeing successful marriages built on less. My parents had been pushed into an engagement by their families, and while they never fell madly in love with each other, not to my knowledge, anyway, they ended up caring for one another quite deeply. I made a mistake in thinking Nate and I could do the same. But when the truth came out about my past, well, part of it, we had nothing to fall back on. Our relationship became an endless volleying of recriminations on his part and apologies on mine." Myka was creasing the square of foil with her thumbnail. "But even if we had been able to get past my lies and his fears for Adelaide's safety, we wouldn't have stayed together."

"Because he would have wanted more?" Myka asked, not looking at her.

"Because I would have." That was as close as Helena could come to the truth. For tonight, anyway.

"Then why -" But the swinging open of the doors to the emergency room brought them both to their feet. After a quick visual sweep of the waiting room, the doctor went to the desk in the reception area and spoke briefly to the woman standing behind it, who was wearing the cheerfully patterned smock that was standard issue for medical assistants everywhere; hers was covered with flowers sporting smiley faces. Myka was already halfway to the desk, pulling a small leather wallet from another pocket. Helena hurried after her.

"Are either of you Mrs. Sheffield?" The doctor asked brusquely, glancing from Myka to Helena. Her scrubs, like her voice and her demeanor, were no nonsense, an institutional green.

Myka flipped open the wallet. "We're the ones who brought Mr. Sheffield in. We're with the Department of Homeland Security."

The doctor barely glanced at it. "Has his wife been notified?"

"She's en route," Helena said.

As the doctor pivoted back toward the doors to the emergency room, Myka said quietly but firmly. "We'd like to talk to him if at all possible." The doctor hesitated, and Myka added just as politely but just as firmly, "He's a person of interest in a case we're investigating, we need to talk to him."

"All I can tell you is that he's in no shape to be talking to anyone." The doctor's eyes narrowed. "If there's anything you know about why he needed to be brought in, I suggest you tell me."

"We can't tell you anything you would find helpful," Myka said. "My associate was interviewing him when he suddenly fell ill."

"The paramedics said they were called to a restaurant," the doctor said, crossing her arms. "Since when does an investigative agency interview persons of interest over dinner?" And how does what your associate's wearing meet the definition of 'business casual' her contemptuous once-over of Helena practically shouted.

"When they don't want to tip him off," Helena interjected, pulling her jacket tighter around her. "If there's anything more specific you could tell us about his condition, we would appreciate it." Not a little irritated at her reaction to the doctor's disapproval, Helena added, "While I'm sure the Tea Party would be supportive of your interrogation of our methods, I believe Mr. Sheffield is the one in greater need of your services."

The doctor gave Helena a disdainful look before growling, "He's still unconscious. Is that sufficiently specific?" She turned away from them and disappeared through the doors.

"Thanks for alienating her," Myka said as they made their way back to their chairs. "We need her to be cooperative."

"I didn't like her attitude," Helena sniffed. "Didn't you see how suspicious she was getting?" She picked up the snacks she had left on her chair and sulkily settled against its back.

"She really wasn't giving us that much static. You're bristling because she was looking at you as if you had come off the set of a porn flick." Myka grinned at her, taking a swig from her bottle of water.

"Please, my blouse alone costs more than the budget of a porn movie." She opened another candy bar wrapper, while Myka lifted a bag of nuts from her lap.

They ate in silence for a while. Myka finished the nuts and placed the empty bag over the half of the Snickers bar Helena had given her. "When Drew was about four, he contracted a virus. It seemed like a typical cold, but then his temperature began to climb. It was the middle of the night, and we drove him to the hospital in Rapid City. The doctors couldn't figure out what virus it was, and his temperature was soaring. Pete was nearly frantic, and I wasn't much better, but I knew I had to be the calm one, and so I was. We sat in chairs like this, and Pete pretty much emptied every vending machine, although neither of us could eat." Myka glanced at Helena and then looked away. "I kept telling him everything would be all right, and eventually it was. The doctors came up with a combination of antibiotics that knocked the virus out, and Drew's fever dropped. But you asked me about unpleasant associations with hospitals, and I wouldn't be completely honest - if we're being completely honest - if I didn't tell you that I always associate hospitals with that day. Not because Drew was so sick, because I knew, _knew_ that he was going to be okay. But because that was also the day I realized I couldn't stay married to Pete." She was bent over in her chair, hands loosely clasped on her legs, and looking down at the floor. "Drew was better, and we were on the hospital bed with him, eating all the junk from the vending machines we hadn't been able to force ourselves to eat before. Pete had the biggest smile on his face because everything was right with his world and everyone he loved most was on that bed with him, and all I could think was 'I can't do this anymore.'"

She was silent after that, and though Helena's mind was filled with questions, she didn't ask them. "I'm sorry" was what she said.

"I think you actually mean it." Myka laughed softly, but there was no humor in it.

"Of course, I do," Helena said just as softly. "You don't commit yourself lightly, Myka."

"Claudia always thought it was a mistake, the marriage. Even on our wedding day, she was telling me it wasn't too late to change my mind, and she was my maid of honor. She tried to pass it off as a joke, but I knew better, Pete knew better." Myka shook her head in fond exasperation at Claudia's stubbornness. After a moment filled only with the sounds of medical staff being paged, she turned to Helena, regarding her steadily. "It wasn't a mistake, I need you to understand that, Helena. Had Pete and I stayed married it would have been a mistake. But for awhile, it was real, what we had."

"I knew, I knew when you called me from the airport that night. Do you remember?" At Myka's nod, she continued, "And I meant what I said then, too. I think one of the few virtues I've managed to hang onto is that I've always wanted you to be happy."

"Why do you have to be thousands of miles away from me when you say things like that?" Myka asked, and the look in her eyes was the one that always left Helena feeling seared, the look that was so open and questioning that she burned whenever she realized she was the object of it. Open and questioning and, fundamentally, innocent, as if Myka believed there was no darkness in Helena that she couldn't face and, by facing it, conquer it.

Because of looks like that. Because I'm usually the cause of your unhappiness. Instead, almost teasingly, Helena said, "I'm here now."

The doors to the reception area opened, and a middle-aged woman with a grayish-blond bob came in from the outside and uncertainly approached the desk. Helena nudged Myka, and they left their wrappers littering the chairs and walked toward Dwight Sheffield's wife.

"I'm Diane Sheffield. I understand that my husband was brought here." She was nearly buttonholing the woman in the smock, who edged away, saying, "Let me page Dr. Saunders for you."

"Mrs. Sheffield?" Helena devoutly wished she was wearing something other than a short, tight suit and a blouse with a plunging neckline.

Her wish was reflected in the appalled expression on Diane Sheffield's face. "You're . . . the associate who called me about Dwight?"

Myka casually stepped between them. "Mrs. Sheffield, I'm Myka Bering. We're with the Department of Homeland Security. We were talking with your husband in relation to a case we're investigating."

The confusion deepened on Mrs. Sheffield's face. "Department of Homeland Security? My husband works for an investment firm. Why would he be mixed up with anything involving Homeland Security?"

"It's a long story," Myka admitted.

The doors to the emergency room blew open, and the doctor approached the three of them with the same impatient attitude with which she had approached Myka and Helena before. "Mrs. Sheffield?" Her eyes fixed on Sheffield's wife, and she pushed Myka and Helena aside. "Will you please follow me? We need to talk about your husband's condition."

Mrs. Sheffield's face paled. "Is it that serious then?"

With a quick, hard look at Myka and Helena, the doctor said unhappily, "I'm afraid it is." She guided Sheffield's wife toward the emergency room doors. "I'm sorry, agents, but you're not going to have an opportunity to speak with Mr. Sheffield."

As they passed through the doors, Helena glanced worriedly at Myka. "I'm not misunderstanding her meaning, am I?"

Myka slowly moved her head from side to side. "She just told us he's not going to make it." She pushed her hand into the front pocket of her jeans, distractedly touching the bagged money clip. "We need to find Russ Bergstrom, and we need to find him now."


End file.
